The Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC)
Central Committee met on Monday to discuss plans on major political
and economic issues, such as economic restructuring, proposed
revision of the nation's Constitution, and revitalization of the
old industrial base in northeast China.
Hu Jintao, general secretary of the Party's Central Committee,
presided over the meeting.
The Political Bureau decided at the meeting to submit two major
documents to the Third Plenary Session of the 16th CPC Central
Committee, scheduled for October 11-14, for deliberation.
The two documents are a draft decision by the CPC Central
Committee on some issues related to the improvement of the
socialist market economic system, and a draft proposal of the CPC
Central Committee on revising part of the Constitution.
The Political Bureau called for efforts to ensure the country's
strategy on revitalizing the old industrial base in northeast
China, describing it as a long-term and arduous task.
It also stressed the need to continue the strategy to develop
its vast but impoverished western region, and support the central
part of the country for faster economic and social development.
Efforts should be made to encourage some developed areas in the
eastern region to take the lead in the country's modernization
drive, and promote coordinated economic and social development on a
regional basis, the Political Bureau said.
The Chinese government decided in early September it is the
right time for China to turn those rusty industrial centers in
northeast China and other parts of the country into modern
industrial ones, making them new and important growth areas of the
national economy.
Covering the provinces of Heilongjiang,
Jilin
and Liaoning,
the northeast region played a major role in the industrial
development of China in 1950s to early 1970s.
The northeast contributed China's first batch of steel, machine
tools, locomotives and planes after the founding of New China in
1949, and still has potential in these fields.
However, many of the traditional industrial enterprises that
were established in the 1950s when China adopted a planned economic
system, became less competitive, and some have been losing money
over the past 20 years, during which time China implemented the
policies of reform and opening up to the outside world, and moved
from a planned economy toward a market economy.
The proportion of the region's industrial output value to the
national total dropped to 9 percent from a record 17 percent. Some
loss-making state-owned industrial enterprises were closed,
resulting in mass unemployment.
Xu Zemin, a research fellow with the Heilongjiang Provincial
Academy of Social Sciences, said the revitalization program is
expected to make the northeastern region a new economic growth area
following the flourishing Pearl River Delta in the south, a result
of the reform drive, and the Yangtze River Delta in the east.
(Xinhua News Agency September 30, 2003)