China Western Development also China’s Western Development, Western China Development, Great Western Development Strategy, or the Open up the West Program is a policy adopted by the People’s Republic of China to boost its less developed western regions.

The policy covers 6 provinces (Gansu, Guizhou, Qinghai, Shaanxi, Sichuan, and Yunnan), 5 autonomous regions (Guangxi, Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, Tibet, and Xinjiang), and 1 municipality (Chongqing).

This region contains 71.4% of mainland China’s area, but only 28.8% of its population, as of the end of 2002, and 16.8% of its total economic output, as of 2003. The main components of the strategy include the development of infrastructure (transport, hydropower plants, energy, and telecommunications), enticement of foreign investment, increased efforts on ecological protection (such as reforestation), promotion of education, and retention of talent flowing to richer provinces.

As of 2006, a total of 1 trillion yuan has been spent building infrastructure in western China Transportation. The western development bureau affiliated to the state council released a list of 10 major projects to launch in 2008, with a combined budget of 436 billion Yuan (64.12 billion U.S. dollars).

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These projects included new railway lines connecting Guiyang and Guangzhou, Lanzhou and Chongqing, Kashgar and Hotan in Xinjiang; highways between Wanyuan and Dazhou in Sichuan Province, Shuikou and Duyun in Guizhou Province; airport expansion projects in Chengdu, Chongqing and Xi’an.

They also include the building of hydropower stations, coal mines, gas and oil transmission tube lines as well as public utilities projects in western regions. By the end of 2007, China has started 92 key construction projects in western regions, with a total investment of more than 1.3 trillion Yuan. In the five years between the 12th and the 13th Congress of the Communist.

Party, China achieved great progress in economic reforms and the opening of the economy to the outside world also began in a big way. Industrial re-structuring was accomplished. Investment in productive and profitable enterprises was increased. Agriculture: energy, resources, transport and communication were given special support.

The annual average growth rate of the GNP reached 10 to 11 percent between 1990 and 1999. During this period, China’s economy was liberalized and privatized at a rapid pace. This is done through the Chinese prefer to call “contractual responsibility system” that conferred long lease-hold rights on the recipient of land and property. China also encouraged investment of foreign capital and gave favorable terms to all foreign investors.

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Fourteen special zones were created in the coastal provinces where foreigners were allowed 100 percent equity. Foreign capital entered China in a big way. The Chinese trade also flourished with various foreign countries particularly the United States, Japan and West European countries. Hong Kong and Macao with their capitalist structures have now become parts of China with a guarantee that these will be maintained so for at least 50 years more.

Communist China has also promised that Taiwan’s capitalist economy will be preserved perpetually whenever it decides to join the mainland. In fact, China is rapidly marching towards system which social rites describe sarcastically as “capitalism. Chinese Characteristics where social ownership and socialism arc increasingly becoming legal fictions.

The share of the public sector in China’s economic has decreased from 96 percent in 1976 to just 26% in 2001. Post-Mao development strategy has largely succeeded in making China an industrial giant and also self-sufficient in the agricultural sphere. The strength of the Chinese strategy of development consists of the following:

1) Abolition of land-lordship. The end of the unproductive commune system, establishment of family leasehold fans in agriculture, peasant initiative in rural enterprises encouraged.

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2) Abolition of mass poverty, promotion of education and removal of illiteracy, wide-spread health services, population control with a single child norm.

3) Economic reforms which have almost liberalized the economy and opened it up to the outside world.

4) China’s policies recognize the importance of market, profitability competition and integration with the world economy but on its own terms.

5) Chinese leadership regards China at the primary stage of socialism and if it any take more than a century to complete the transition to socialism.

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China’s development strategy should be based on pragmatic considerations. As Deng said, the cat could be white or black, what is important is that it