China's Central, Western Economies Improving

NANNING, August 8 (Xinhua) -- China's central and western regions, known as resource suppliers to the country's fast-paced eastern economic boomtowns, have accelerated reforms to readjust their development strategy and draw more investment for infrastructure construction.

The regions, covering 86 percent of the country's territory and boasting 58 percent of the population, have abundant energy and raw material resources, as well as cheap labor. But their economies have lagged far behind that of the eastern region.

In recent years, China has been encouraging tighter mutually- beneficial cooperation between the eastern and the western areas, which has already provided chances for more cross-province mergers combining the advantages of both areas.

Hu Angang, a noted economist with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that it is high time for the fast-growing eastern area to take on the role of invigorating the economy in the central and eastern areas of the country.

Hu said that the mid-western region has laid solid foundations for the development of the tobacco, alcoholic, electronics, machinery, energy and chemical industries, and the region is also a big market.

"Multinationals can not afford to overlook the big market in China's western region," said P.Y. Lai, president of Motorola ( China) Electronics Ltd, when he visited Chengdu, capital of Sichuan Province, last month.

The telecommunications giant plans to consolidate its position in the western part of China by investing 100 million U.S. dollars to set up an electrical parts and components plant in the Chengdu High and New Technology Development Zone.

The region has benefited greatly from the country's new wave of infrastructure construction, with 62 percent of China's increased infrastructure budget allocated for the region last year, according to sources at the State Development Planning Commission.

However, State financing alone is far from enough to ease the thirst for funds needed to speed up infrastructure construction. As a result, the central government has helped the region to work out a list of priority projects, ranging from communications facilities, agriculture and water conservation to the energy and environmental protection industries to attract investment from the eastern areas as well as overseas investors.

The region's Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan provinces, the Guangxi Zhuang and Tibet autonomous regions, and Chongqing Municipality used 20.9 billion yuan of such investment last year, up 65 percent on the year-to-year basis.

The vitalized economy has stimulated the development of State- owned enterprises. In the first five months of this year, large and medium-sized enterprises in Guangxi began making profits, after being in the red for three years.