(Yicai Global) Aug. 8 -- Five city clusters are set to become major industrial development regions in the Yangtze River Economic Belt, dubbed China's 'Golden Waterway,' under official guidance.

The Yangtze River Delta, Chengdu-Chongqing, the central provinces of Guizhou and Yunnan and the middle reaches of the river will all undergo optimization under new guidance from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Economic Information Daily, a newspaper sponsored by state-owned news agency Xinhua, reported.

The layout of the urban clusters needs to focus on the industrial development and strategic adjustment of the Golden Waterway, said Yu Hongsheng, director of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences' Institute of Urban and Population Development.

Industrial parks and clusters have become the main source of industry along the middle and lower reaches of the river, data shows. The city clusters on the Yangtze River have more than 150 provincial-or-above level industrial development zones, which mainly focus on food, textiles, equipment manufacturing, metallurgy and chemical and building materials.

Reports suggest the industrial development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt will take Shanghai, Wuhan and Chongqing as a core and use other cities, such as Nanjing, Nantong and Zhenjiang, as important hubs to guide resource processing, capital and technology-intensive industries to promote green, low-carbon development.

Industrial upgrades and relocation from the Yangtze River Delta to the Chengdu-Chongqing region and city clusters in the middle reaches of the river have become widely accepted, said Liu Shilin, head of Shanghai Jiao Tong University's Institute of Urban Science.

Insiders believe the economic zone is focusing on building the industrial development of the five major clusters to promote industrial division of labor and an orderly transfer between the clusters.