Vice-Premier Hui Liangyu yesterday called on southwest China's Chongqing Municipality to make greater efforts to become a leading economic force in the country's underdeveloped western region.

Hui attended a meeting marking the 10th anniversary of the setting up of the Chongqing municipality. In March 1997, the city was approved as China's fourth centrally administered municipality after Beijing, Shanghai, and Tianjin.

Hui extended his congratulations on behalf of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council.

He said Chongqing must aim to become "an economic development engine in the country's western region, an economic center in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, and a municipality with coordinated development between urban and rural areas".

Hui said he hoped Chongqing could establish a "new" way of development, namely, using big cities to lead the development of rural areas.

Compared with the country's affluent eastern coastal areas, the central and western regions have been left behind in economic development.

On June 7, Chongqing and Chengdu, capital of neighboring Sichuan Province, were selected by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), as pilot cities for coordinated and balanced development between urban and rural areas.

Covering 82,000 sq km, Chongqing Municipality has a population of 31 million, 73 percent of whom live in rural areas.

The city's gross domestic product was 348.6 billion yuan (US$45.8 billion) in 2006. However, its growth has been grossly uneven.

The per capita GDP in Wuxi County was 3,593 yuan last year, only one-tenth of that in the developed Yuzhong District.

Acknowledging the municipality's economic, political, and cultural development in the past 10 years, Hui also urged Chongqing to improve its overall capacity and to change its pattern of economic growth.

Cadres at all levels should maintain the progressive spirit and further enhance their awareness of the importance of thrift, plain living, and hard work, Hui said.

In a related development, the local government is seeking suggestions from people around the world on how to achieve a balanced development.

In an open letter posted on the city's website - www.cqnews.net -- Party chief Wang Yang and Mayor Wang Hongju encouraged people "of all walks of life, netizens, scholars, specialists at home and abroad, and research and media institutions" to submit proposals via the Internet. They also said they would study the experiences of other countries in "urbanization and industrialization.”

"The ultimate aim of coordinated rural and urban development is to enable rural farmers and migrant workers to enjoy the same rights, public services and living conditions as urban residents," Yang Weimin, an official with the NDRC, said.

People can submit their ideas by e-mail to wangyang@cq.gov.cn and hongju@cq.gov.cn.

(Xinhua News Agency June 19, 2007)