With experience gained in reinvigorating China's northeast region, the central government has started to study a transformation plan and related policy supports for reviving its old central industrial bases.

China will work out an overall plan to inject vitality into its old northeast industrial rustbelts and also east Inner Mongolia to guide regional development in the next five years, said a senior government official here Tuesday.

In line with the mapping of the state's 11th Five-Year Plan, the central government will determine overall objectives and socioeconomic areas to focus on rejuvenating the northeast industrial region, said Zhang Guobao, director of the State Council Office for Rejuvenation of Northeast China.

In a report delivered at a meeting of the Standing Committee of the 10th National People's Congress (NPC), China's top legislature, he warned that the northeast region has been troubled with an increasingly large gap with the developed coastal areas since the starting of the opening-up and reform era in the late 1970s, despite major progress achieved in the past two years by implementing the reinvigoration strategy.

Government statistics show that the gross domestic product (GDP) of the three northeast rustbelt provinces of Liaoning, Jilin and Helongjiang each jumped by over 10 percent from last year, the highest increase since 2000, but their proportion to the national total declined from 11.1 percent in 2002 to 9.3 percent in 2004.

In 1980, the aggregate economic volume of Guangdong Province was only one half of that of Liaoning, but by 2001, the volume of three northeast provinces combined was only 62 percent of that of Guangdong.

The rejuvenation campaign remains an arduous task, said Zhang, stressing that the northeast region faces many difficulties such as state-owned enterprise (SOE) restructuring, an extensive economic growth pattern, and a huge amount of non-performing loans.

Along with their socioeconomic transformation, the three provinces are under tremendous pressure to offer adequate job opportunities as its forestry, farming, military and coal mining industries alone have laid-off over 5 million people.

Three blasts in two coal mines and a petrochemical plant as well as the bird flu pandemic have also affected local socioeconomic development in 2005.

As the first year of the 11th Five-Year period plan approaches, Zhang has urged the northeast regional governments to strive for innovation in restructuring by deepening SOE reform, promoting the growth of the non-government sector, gradually setting up a social security scheme that fits local conditions and attracts foreign investors, strategic ones in particular.

While consolidating the status of the northeast region as a grain production base, its industrial structure should be improved to build the region into a technological equipment, shipping and auto manufacturing base, said Zhang.

East Inner Mongolia and Helongjiang, rich in coal, can develop themselves by transmitting electricity to eastern and southern regions, and intensifying electricity trade with Russia, he said.

(Xinhua News Agency December 28, 2005)