With experience gained in reinvigorating China's northeast
region, the central government has started to study a
transformation plan and related policy supports for reviving its
old central industrial bases.
China will work out an overall plan to inject vitality into its
old northeast industrial rustbelts and also east Inner Mongolia to
guide regional development in the next five years, said a senior
government official here Tuesday.
In line with the mapping of the state's 11th Five-Year Plan, the
central government will determine overall objectives and
socioeconomic areas to focus on rejuvenating the northeast
industrial region, said Zhang Guobao, director of the State Council
Office for Rejuvenation of Northeast China.
In a report delivered at a meeting of the Standing Committee of
the 10th National People's Congress (NPC), China's top legislature,
he warned that the northeast region has been troubled with an
increasingly large gap with the developed coastal areas since the
starting of the opening-up and reform era in the late 1970s,
despite major progress achieved in the past two years by
implementing the reinvigoration strategy.
Government statistics show that the gross domestic product (GDP)
of the three northeast rustbelt provinces of Liaoning, Jilin and
Helongjiang each jumped by over 10 percent from last year, the
highest increase since 2000, but their proportion to the national
total declined from 11.1 percent in 2002 to 9.3 percent in
2004.
In 1980, the aggregate economic volume of Guangdong Province was
only one half of that of Liaoning, but by 2001, the volume of three
northeast provinces combined was only 62 percent of that of
Guangdong.
The rejuvenation campaign remains an arduous task, said Zhang,
stressing that the northeast region faces many difficulties such as
state-owned enterprise (SOE) restructuring, an extensive economic
growth pattern, and a huge amount of non-performing loans.
Along with their socioeconomic transformation, the three
provinces are under tremendous pressure to offer adequate job
opportunities as its forestry, farming, military and coal mining
industries alone have laid-off over 5 million people.
Three blasts in two coal mines and a petrochemical plant as well
as the bird flu pandemic have also affected local socioeconomic
development in 2005.
As the first year of the 11th Five-Year period plan approaches,
Zhang has urged the northeast regional governments to strive for
innovation in restructuring by deepening SOE reform, promoting the
growth of the non-government sector, gradually setting up a social
security scheme that fits local conditions and attracts foreign
investors, strategic ones in particular.
While consolidating the status of the northeast region as a
grain production base, its industrial structure should be improved
to build the region into a technological equipment, shipping and
auto manufacturing base, said Zhang.
East Inner Mongolia and Helongjiang, rich in coal, can develop
themselves by transmitting electricity to eastern and southern
regions, and intensifying electricity trade with Russia, he
said.
(Xinhua News Agency December 28, 2005)