Regional inequality is one of the biggest challenges bedeviling fast-growing China. One of the government's responses has been to launch development schemes aimed at helping poorer regions catch up with the prosperous coast.
That regional development strategy is now undergoing a major shift, as the focus moves from the underdeveloped west to the northeast, often called China's rust belt.
The western development programme, launched with great fanfare in 2000, was for the most part a massive construction undertaking: some 600 billion yuan has been spent on new roads, rail lines, dams, and other basic infrastructure - not to mention the phalanxes of new apartment blocks, most of them empty, that greet visitors travelling from Chongqing's airport to the city.
Some of this building has had a beneficial impact, for instance by connecting previously remote rural areas to urban markets. But despite endless road shows, the programme has had limited success in attracting new productive investment to the region from other parts of China and abroad. On the whole, planners at the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) have concluded that the huge state investment in the Go West programme has generated a poor return, and that the scheme should be scaled back, if not shelved.
Over the next five-year plan period (2006 to 2010), infrastructure spending is likely to emphasise 'first tier' inland provinces, such as Anhui and Jiangxi, that lie within relatively easy reach of the coast. This is based on the sensible idea that the coastal export-processing model can probably be extended inland if enough transport links are built to cut travel times from these provinces to the major ports.
Already, export-oriented investment has begun to trickle into cities such as Anhui's Wuhu and Jiangxi's Nanchang.
At the same time, the government is likely to accelerate work on its other main regional development scheme 'Northeast Revitalisation'. This was formally launched in 2003 with the establishment of a State Council leading group and a Northeast Revitalisation Office (NRO) within the NDRC in Beijing.
