Others News
- Central China to get steering panel
Date: 18-Jan-2007 Sources: (Shenzhen Daily)
A NEW development office is to be established to help boost China's struggling central provinces, said Fan Hengshan, director of the Department of Regional Economy of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), early this week.
The regional office will be directly under the State Council, the country's Cabinet, and is expected to function like the State Council offices dedicated to promoting the development of the western and northeastern regions, experts said.
The move is in line with the State Council's strategy to encourage the 'rise?of the central provinces of Shanxi, Anhui, Jiangxi, Henan, Hubei and Hunan, which are home to at least a quarter of the country's population, Fan said.
The last region to be covered by a national development plan, the central provinces have, in terms of per capita gross domestic product growth, lagged behind not only those on the eastern coast, which opened up in the 1980s, but also their neighbors to the west, which have benefited from a 'go-west?plan since the late 1990s.
The combined foreign trade volume of the country's six central provinces accounted for less than 3 percent of the national total in 2005. They are home to only 671 overseas-financed enterprises, or 5 percent of China's total, according to a development report published recently by the Social Sciences Academic Press.
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