At the turn of the centuries, China's central government has adopted the strategy of developing the country's western regions in a big way.

With increased investment and preferential policies, the new strategy aims to turn the remote and vast western regions into a beautiful land with harmonious relations between man and nature.

Covering 10 provinces, autonomous regions and a centrally-administered municipality, the western regions make up 56 percent of China's total land area, are home to 23 percent of the national population and own more than half of the country's natural resources.

In the 1980s, Deng Xiaoping, chief architect of China's reforms and opening up, proposed an coordinated development plan for the country, that is, the central and western regions of the country first support the development and opening up of east China, and when the east has developed to a certain degree, it would aid economic development in the rest of the country.

Through two decades of efforts, China has basically achieved the objective of providing enough food and clothing for its people. In fact, most Chinese people now enjoy a living standard that approaches "xiao kang," or a fair level of comfort and affluence. Problem is that economic disparities between the east and west have widened.

In the past two decades, while annual economic growth in the east approached 13 percent on average, that in the rest of the country was less than 9 percent; per-capita GDP in the east has exceeded the national average by 40 percent.

More than 90 percent of the poor population of the country live in the country's central and western regions.

Thus, for China to modernize and become a medium-developed country, it is vital to speed up economic development in the west and narrow the gap between east and west.

Zeng Peiyan, minister in charge of the State Development Planning Commission, said that without a developed west, China cannot achieve modernization.

Experts stressed that the great development of the west calls for finding solutions to sharp contradictions between development and the environment, between population size and resources.

Yang Fan, a researcher of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that in coming decades, it will be unrealistic for China to settle all its newly increased population in its eastern areas, which are already densely populated and deficient in resources.

The vast western region with rich resources has great potential to attract the newly-born population, he said.

In fact, Yang said, China's economic development, including that in east China, has been affected by insufficient demands. Quite a lot of funds, technology and labor need to find new areas to flow to.

Experts say the country's west can become a new economic growth area, predicting that, when developed, it can absorb more than 300 million people, provide more than half of east China's energy needs and 60 percent of its raw materials needs.

Though no details have been worked out, the strategy of developing the west will definitely prioritize protection of ecological environment and infrastructural construction.

With China's impending entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO), more foreign investment is expected to go to the country's west, they said.

The west faces a host of challenges. It has a weak infrastructure, and is deficient in technology, talented people and funds. That is why achieving the objectives of developing the west is a long-term task and a systems project, as Premier Zhu Rongji said.