Almost every Chinese city has an industrial park or two but few are as attractively named as the Big Peach Flower industrial zone in Hefei. And even fewer are growing as quickly. Gree, the country's biggest maker of air conditioners, opened a plant less than two years ago that already employs 10,000 people. Next door Midea, another air conditioner-maker, also has a vast factory.

What is most remarkable about these new plants is their location. Hefei is the capital of Anhui province, a rural backwater 400km inland from Shanghai, whose main role in the boom of the past three decades has been to supply labour to the factory towns on the south and east coasts. Now, however, the modern industrial world of the coastal region is coming inland to Anhui.

This shift inland could prove vital to China's economic prospects over the next few years. At a time of uncertainty about the country's ability to maintain high growth, the accelerated development of the centre of the country is providing an important fillip.