What are the main challenges China's western regions face in the country's great west development strategy, and what efforts should local governments and enterprises make to obtain more business opportunities and economic growth? These are hot topics at the ongoing Western Forum in the southwest city of Nanning. The following is an interview to the United Nations Resident Co-ordinator in China and a few experts. Let's listen to what they said.
 
The UN resident coordinator, Khalid Malik, said China's Western Development Strategy is a major tool and a vehicle for reducing regional disparities and gaps. However, despite great success and progress, many challenges remain and new concerns are emerging. He highlighted some of them.

"First, the gap between the western provinces and eastern China has not decreased. Per capita GDP of the Western Region is still about one third of the coastal region. Second, despite significant improvements in infrastructure and production conditions in poor areas, the pace of poverty reduction has slowed significantly since the late 1990s. Third, about eight million people are estimated to migrate from the poor interior provinces to cities."

In addition to the above challenges, Khalid Malik notes that HIV/AIDS is a newly emerging global concern. Of the 840,000 people infected with HIV/AIDS in China, many are poor people. Many provinces in the Western Region will definitely need to act aggressively in meeting this new challenge.

Facing these concerns, he says the UN system in China will aim to redouble its efforts in helping the Western Development Strategy succeed.

He told CRI that there are three key UN programs to be started in China's west regions in terms of improving the governance and leadership of local governments and fiscal reform to reduce the disparities between urban and rural households.

'The UN system will get actively involved in the western regions, not just project by project. We have many more programs. They are all designed to try to find ways of helping the government and the country balance the development and the leadership."

Khalid Malik says policy shifts are needed so as to ensure that this investment-based strategy more effectively delivers on balancing economic and social development.

His words are echoed by Zhang Naijian, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Managerial Sciences.

He said the impetus for the west's future development should be market driven, rather than merely rely on government orders. A greater balance and coordination between physical infrastructure, human capital and institutional development is urgently needed.

Many participants at the forum have emphasized that environment and development are simply two sides of the same coin for the west regions. Setting up a development agenda that suits its own conditions and avoiding mistakes made in other places are perhaps a unique opportunity for decision makers to grasp.

(CRI November 19, 2004)