connectivity. In the early 2000s, Chinese scholars began using the term “Greater Pearl River Delta” (GPRD) which described the 9 + 2 city agglomeration that encompassed post-handover Hong Kong and Macao. The GPRD was conceptualized as a series of lesser cities as industrial nodes with specialist functions clustering around two prominent cores – Guangzhou, the provincial capital, and Shenzhen. In 2003, Guangdong province advocated the idea of “Pan-PRD” as an even more extensive regional construct that comprised nine neighboring provinces to promote economic cooperation. A somewhat similar idea should later be mentioned in the English version of China's 13th Five-Year Plan, taking the Pearl River Delta and including the larger province of Guangdong. Four years later finally, on 13 April 2017, the heading of a piece of news released at the English language government website of the State Council adopted the name "Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Bay Area". Just over two months later, on 1 July 2017, the "Framework Agreement on Deepening Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Cooperation in the Development of the Bay Area" () was signed in Hong Kong. From then on, the term “Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area” has been widely used to refer to the region in officially translated sources. English-language sources tend to simply refer to the area as “Greater Bay Area” or GBA for short. Its geographical makeup, the cities it encompasses and its population centers are detailed in the section below. Geography and population centers The GBA is located in the southern coastal area of China (21◦320–24◦260N, 111◦200–115◦240E). Located in the very south part of China, the climate of the Greater Bay Area ranges from humid subtropical to tropical climate in the far south. There are a few mountain ranges collectively called the Nan Mountains (Nan Ling) as well as a few inactive volcanoes on Leizhou Peninsula. The Greater Bay Area consists of nine cities of Guangdong Province, which account for around 30 % of the land mass of Guangdong Province, plus the Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and Macao. It is in the Pearl River Delta along the South China coast. Mountain ranges and peninsulas shape the GBA. The province of Guangdong, for instance, possesses a coastline of due to the multiplicity of islands, bays and peninsulas. This multiplicity of small islands results from the Pearl River Delta, which is the convergent point of the East, North and West Rivers. It is therefore unsurprising that the