Nationally, China’s 15th five-year plan also underscores the advancing of the Greater Bay Area by enhancing the alignment of rules, standards and institutional frameworks. Cooperation in the Greater Bay Area remains constrained by different legal, regulatory and governance systems under the “one country, two systems” framework. The San Francisco Bay Area experience offers a useful point of reference. Bay Area governments came to recognise that these were shared challenges spanning multiple jurisdictions, legal mandates and regulatory regimes. The Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) was founded to provide a solution in 1961.