Western Development Strategy

Since reform and opening-up began, China’s eastern coast developed first, and the gap between east and west gradually widened. The western region comprises 12 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities, including Chongqing, Sichuan, Guizhou, Yunnan, Tibet, Shaanxi, Gansu, Qinghai, Ningxia, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and Guangxi, covering about 71 percent of the country’s land; it is rich in resources but relatively backward in economic and social development. As early as the 1980s Deng Xiaoping put forward the “two overall situations” concept: the coastal areas should open up faster and develop first, and the interior should take that overall situation into account; when development reached a certain point, the coast should devote more strength to helping the interior develop, which was also an overall situation. In 1999 the Party Central Committee proposed the Western Development strategy, and in 2000 the State Council set up a leading group for it, formally launching the effort. It focused on infrastructure and ecological protection: the state increased investment and policy support, built major projects such as the West–East Gas Pipeline, West–East Power Transmission and the Qinghai–Tibet Railway, and carried out ecological programs such as returning farmland to forest, returning grazing land to grassland and natural forest protection. After more than twenty years, transport, communications, energy and other infrastructure in the west improved markedly, growth quickened, living standards rose significantly and ethnic unity was strengthened. In 2020 the Central Committee and State Council issued opinions on forming a new pattern for Western Development.