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 | Thursday, April 27, 2000, updated at 16:17(GMT+8) | ||||||||||||
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Western China Becomes Cradle of Men of WealthTwentysomething Han Jun started his career as a general manager in the Xi'an New and High-tech Development Zone with the attitude that anyone can become a millionaire."I came here just in a pair of cloth shoes two years ago," Han said, standing in front of the gleaming new office building of the Xinli IC Company Ltd. "Now I have enough money to buy 100 Mercedes Benz cars." The 26-year-old graduated from Xi'an Jiaotong University in 1997 with a degree in computer science. He grew up poor, and dreamed of wealth. "My father failed to save the amount of money for a Benz car throughout his life. In my view, it is not too difficult to become a millionaire in two years, " he said. Like Han, many of Xi'an's nouveau riche live in eye-catching luxury apartments in a southern suburb of the provincial capital of northwest China's Shaanxi. And like Han, many people in China are hanging their hopes on the development of the west now that the Chinese government has launched its program to speed up economic growth in the resource-rich but underdeveloped region. The western region is comprised of nine provinces and autonomous regions and one municipality, with a total area of 5.4 million square kilometers and a population of 285 million, accounting for the nation's 56 percent and 23 percent, respectively. However, its per-capita gross domestic product (GDP) is much lower than the national average. Shaanxi Province took steps this year to keep its talented college graduates working at home. Though some 20,000 graduating students in the province said they wanted to work in Shanghai, Guangzhou and other big cities in eastern and southern China, almost the same number have vowed to make their fortune out of the western region. So many migrant workers headed west this year that Xi'an's suburban population now outnumbers that of the city proper. Zhang Lisheng, a native of east China's Shandong Province, settled in Xi'an after graduating from a university in Shanghai. " Shaanxi will become China's largest highway communication hub in the next decade. As a highway designer, I can benefit enormously from such a large project," he said. A recent survey shows that the average monthly income of residents in Xi'an is still half of the amount earned in Shanghai, China's leading industrial center. "I believe the gap will be narrowed soon when the drive to revive western China reaches its goal and the local people's mindset about development changes," Zhang said. Zhao Rong, a professor at Northwest China University, said the western region maintains superiority over certain eastern provinces in terms of technical personnel, historical sites and natural resources. He said the strategy of accelerating western development gives people from all walks of life the chance to make money. "Perhaps someone like Bill Gates will emerge in western China in a few years," he said, referring to the president of computer giant Microsoft. Koji Kadowaki, president of Guangzhou-Hongda Automobile Co. Ltd. , said his company recently set up a sales center in Xi'an, the first of its kind in western China, as more people in the region will have the resources to buy their own cars. Improvement of the ecological environment is high on the agenda of western development, and the move will fatten the bank accounts of many people in the region. Hui Jingpeng, a 46-year-old from Xi' an, has contracted 200 hectares of sandy area in the Mu Us desert to build a farm, and expects his yearly income to hit three million yuan.
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