Although China's overall plan for the development of its west region is still in the making, local authorities have already worked out a series of practical policies and measures relating to infrastructure construction in compliance with specific local conditions.

Zhang Zhongwei, a deputy to the Ninth National People's Congress (NPC) and governor of southwest China's Sichuan Province, said the investment to the social fixed assets in his province will rise to 140 billion yuan this year (17 billion US dollars).

"Most of the increased funds are geared to communications and telecommunications and other infrastructure construction projects for blazing a trail for the new development," he said, adding his provincial government has also brought about preferential policies to facilitate overseas participation in the development.

Shaanxi Province in northwest China, a juncture between the country's central and western regions, is working hard to act as a bridgehead in the new round of growth in the west. NPC deputy Cheng Andong, governor of Shaanxi, said the investment in fixed assets in his province will be 73 billion yuan (9 billion US dollars) this year, a rise of 15.9 percent over 1999.

According to Cheng, the investment from the provincial government is unprecedented and a dozen projects involving railways, expressways and airport are now under construction.

With 56 percent of China's land area, the western area has 23 percent of the national population and over half of the country's natural resources.

The 10 western areas targeted for development are Shaanxi, Gansu and Qinghai provinces and the Ningxia Hui and Xinjiang Uygur autonomous regions in the northwest, Sichuan, Guizhou and Yunnan provinces, Chongqing Municipality and Tibet Autonomous Region, are mapping out their blueprints. they all have set ecological and environmental protection on top agenda.

Gansu Province, one of the provinces with serious desertifications, has a forest coverage of less than 4 percent. Its provincial government has decided to plant more trees and grass instead of farm crops. Lanzhou City, the provincial capital, is going to turn all denuded mountainsides into greenery in next four years.

"Gansu has to change its poor ecological environment before it gets rid of poverty," said Sun Ying, governor of the province.

Meanwhile, the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region will turn a 70, 000 sq km area into an oasis so as to double its oasis acreage in the region this year, while Qinghai Province, where the Yangtze and Yellow rivers, the two longest rivers in China, rise, also allocated enormous funds for the protection of pastures around the Qinghai Lake, the biggest and most famous inland lake in the country, forest screen projects and oasises in the Qaidam Basin.

The State Forestry Administration has formulating afforestation programs in the western region with an input of more than 100 million yuan (12 million US dollars) in the cooperation with provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions in the west.

NPC Deputy Wang Rongxuan, mayor of the provincial capital of Chengdu in Sichuan Province, cited the acute shortage of talents and qualified personnel as one of major factors for the underdeveloped conditions in the west.

Noting economic growth of the west is a long-term systematic program, he acknowledged that the acceleration of the development of science, technology and education and cultivation of talents play a vital role in the development. He said his city has worked out preferential policies to draw technical talents to work in Chengdu.

Like Chengdu, other major cities, provinces or autonomous regions in the west, too, have worked out preferential policies, one after another, to attract talents from elsewhere in China or overseas, as the Chinese legend of "building golden nests to lure phoenixes" goes, for the promotion of scientific, technological and educational development and to encourage application of scientific attainment in the development of the region.