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Essay on The Economic Situation In China's Western Provinces
Abstract
The impressive growth of the Chinese economy in the past two decades has attracted a lot of attention and hence triggered the emergence of a huge literature in this area. However, most studies have focused on either China as a whole or the coastal regions only.
As a result, studies of China’s western regions are limited. This paper aims to make a contribution to the understanding of economic growth in the western regions. Its objective is to assess economic performance in China’s western regions in the past decades, compare growth in the western and coastal regions, and draw policy implications for the western development program or “go-west” program.
Introduction
China has achieved impressive economic growth since the late 1970s when economic reform program was implemented in the nation.
This growth has lifted the standard of living of many Chinese citizens. However, the benefit of economic growth is not evenly distributed among the Chinese regions. Coastal China has become relatively more affluent than the interior areas. It was partly due to this imbalanced development that the western development program or “go-west” program was initiated by the Chinese government in 1999. This short paper attempts to provide an assessment of economic performance of China’s western regions. It thus adds to the literature which has mainly focuses on the coastal regions or China as whole.
China’s Western Regions and Economic Performance
Officially, the “go-west” program covers five autonomous regions, six provinces and one autonomous municipality. The sheer size of the western regions in China contradicts sharply with their small contribution to the Chinese economy in terms of gross domestic product (GDP), international trade and foreign investment (see Table 1). A very strong message from Table 1 is that regional economies in China’s west are poorly engaged internationally. These regions together have attracted less than....
