The coming launch of an ambitious natural gas pipeline project promises to translate the strategy of developing China's west into reality.

The super-project aims to transport natural gas in the central Asian region of Xinjiang to Shanghai. It is a key to the successful implementation of the government's strategy of developing the west and an important measure to narrow wealth disparities between China's east and west, according to deputies to the Ninth National People's Congress (NPC), now in session here, and members of the Ninth National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC). The government is inviting foreign businesses to invest in the project, which at a cost of 120 billion yuan is second only to the Three Gorges Project in investment size. "The project is entirely different from massive construction of industries for defense purposes in the country's southwest in the 1960s," said Chen Wanzhi, a deputy from Chongqing Municipality, southwest China. Some economists and officials proposed the idea of accelerating the development of central and western areas in the 1980s, but the disparity between the east and west has actually widened since then as government polices were aimed at letting the east get rich faster.

Out of worries about the imbalance between the east and the west, Deng Xiaoping, chief architect of China's reform and opening- up program, proposed that economic development in central and western areas should be accelerated after the coastal regions have become developed.

China's west comprises 10 provinces, autonomous regions and one centrally-administered municipality, which have a combined area of about 5.4 million sq. km and a population of 285 million. The areas have abundant natural resources, but per-capita GDP there is only half of the national average.

The strategy of developing the west has been hailed as an important policy decision for China in the new century. The projective gas pipeline will be 4,200 km long. The project was made public a week before the opening of the NPC session. According to deputies to the NPC session, natural gas pipelines are also planned in other parts of the country, and all of them involve resources-rich western areas.

These projects are designed to form a nationwide network of natural gas supplies based on three major natural gas producers in the west: Sichuan, Shaanxi and Xinjiang. The network will also cover most developed areas in the east.

The strategy of developing the west should be based on rich resources in the west in the first place, which could increase local fiscal income and create job opportunities there, said Xu Peng, an NPC deputy from Xinjiang.

The eastern areas have also shown great interest in the program since it would help ease their energy shortages, said Huang Qifan from Shanghai, a receiver of Xinjiang natural gas. Economists predict that gas pipeline projects would make areas along their routes a magnet for capital, technology and talents, facilitating the growth of energy, steel, building materials and automobile industries.

Launching these energy projects would also bring built infrastructure facilities in the west into fuller play, said Chen Wanzhi.

Recent statistics show that the western part of China has natural gas reserves of 1.5 trillion cubic meters. Dai Mingzi, an official from the China National Petroleum Corporation, said that natural gas has huge market potential since it is to become a major form of clean energy in the 21st century. However, some economists also warned that the launching of gas projects is only a start for the program of narrowing the economic disparity between the west and east, and that the western areas should accelerate building a market economic system to brighten their economic prospects.