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AbstractChina's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) promises to have profound effects on the development of the nation's economy and on nationwide enterprise reorganization. This paper attempts to address the relationship between China's WTO accession and state enterprise reforms, and their impacts on the performance of China's spatial economy, including the possible rise and fall of several large national financial centres, such as Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. It is argued that China's new international ties will enhance current enterprise reforms and promote changes in the existing pattern of enterprise organization, with enterprise mergers, acquisitions, takeover activity and the formation of large multinational corporations (MNCs) becoming dominant trends within China's industrial development. Alongside these changes, some economic sectors, such as information technology (IT) and advanced professional services are predicted to become concentrated in several national information 'heartlands,' each having its own well‐developed information infrastructure and other comparative advantages over traditional industrial centers. Meanwhile traditional industrial enterprises, while continuing to rely upon their pre‐assigned resource priorities, will certainly face fierce international competition in the turbulent global market. The spatial shift of production and trade undoubtedly requires that Chinese enterprises, especially those that are state‐owned, reorganize their production‐trade systems according to the global 'rules of the game'. All of these changes, due to take effect imminently with China's WTO accession, will fundamentally restructure China's spatial economic landscape, including the creation of a new information heartland and hinterland that will in turn determine the life or death of the country's national financial centres. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.