The uneven economic development, moreover, has led to large-scale migrations of laborers and resources from the west to the east, resulting in a distorted allocation of labor and resources.

The faster development in less developed regions, however, offers hope that the previous phenomenon of economic imbalance might be reversed, said Zhang.

Chen Xiushan added that the rise of central and western regions has greatly enhanced China's confidence in confronting the shockwaves of the global financial tsunami.

In the long run, said Chen, balanced regional development will bring many benefits to the national economy. For one thing, he noted, the ascendancy of poorer regions portends an easing of large-scale labor migration, as well as many social problems that accompany it.

Beyond that, Chen said, the quickly developing central and western regions pose big pressures on coastal areas, forcing the latter to upgrade technology and advance industrial infrastructure in order to promote the national economic structural readjustment.

Chen Xiushan said the fast development in central and western regions prompts two very important questions.

First, is such a fast growth rate sustainable? And second, is the development of these regions based on energy consumption and resource exploitation, or can alternative energies be used to achieve an ecologically friendly economy in these regions?

Those problems haunt the development in eastern coastal areas and are still far from being resolved. Nonetheless, Chen said he expects a better development pattern in central and western regions overall.

Liu Yong, a regional economic researcher at the Development Research Center of the State Council, said that the fast economic recovery in central and western regions, spurred by the government stimulus package, has laid a solid foundation for the country's overall economic revival.

He said provinces in central and western regions, excluding Shanxi and Sichuan, all secured steady growth in the first half of this year.

Inner Mongolia and Guangxi Zhuang autonomous regions, Chongqing Municipality, and Anhui and Jiangxi provinces, meanwhile, have all been outperforming other provinces, stealing the show amid a gloomy economic environment.

Six Measures to Support Development in Western Regions

On August 20, 2009, the State Council adopted the Guidelines on Maintaining the Steady and Relatively Fast Economic Development of Western Regions in Coping With the International Financial Crisis (the Guidelines).

The western region covers 12 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities), namely Shaanxi, Gansu, Qinghai, Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou, the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, the Tibet Autonomous Region, the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and Chongqing Municipality.

The Guidelines propose six principal measures:

1. Fully tapping the western region's potential in

expanding domestic demand. Central expenditures should be mainly invested in western regions in the fields of infrastructure, ecological and environmental protection, post-earthquake reconstruction and other projects relating to the improvement of people's livelihoods.

2. Expanding railway, highway, airport and irrigation facility construction, and enhancing achievements in returning farmland to forests and returning rangeland to grassland.

3. Upgrading industrial structures and modifying economic development patterns. Outdated production capacity and repeated construction projects should be eliminated.

4. Expediting the development of social undertakings to improve people's livelihoods, increasing employment and enhancing overall social security. Additional efforts will be made to resolve the portal water security problem in rural areas within the next two to three years.

5. Accelerating the development of the non-public economy, deepening the reform of state-owned enterprise, and fostering industrial conglomerates and groups. Efforts should also be made to push forward resources tax reforms, establish ecology-compensation mechanisms on a trial basis, transfer industries based in eastern areas to western regions in an orderly way, promote international economic exchange and cooperation and create new patterns for the development and opening of border regions.

6. Expediting post-earthquake reconstruction and fulfilling reconstruction plans. Priority should be given to the construction of housing and public service facilities like schools and hospitals, with more emphasis on project quality.

(Source: Xinhua News Agency)