BOOK REVIEWS

Chen Shupeng, Yang Ruwan and Lin Hui eds., Xin jingyi yu Zhonguo xibu kaifa

In the second half of 1999 the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), notably Jiang Zemin and Zhu Rongji, publicly announced an apparent departure in the regional development policy of the People’s Republic of China [PRC.] For the previous twenty years, ever since Mao’s principles of equal development and regional self-sufficiency—encapsulated in the description of “The whole country a chessboard”—had been set aside, the PRC’s regional development had been based on a more differentiated approach that privileged the eastern and coastal economies and their interactions with the outside world. Now, without abandoning other aspects of its regional development and economic management policies the CCP was emphasising the need to develop the PRC’s interior under the call to “Open Up the West!” (Xibu dakaifa).

This volume, edited by Chen Shupeng, Yang Ruwan and Lin Hui, provides an indispensable introduction to the economic geography of China’s western region, that will prove extremely useful to anyone with a serious interest in the subject. The editors are geographers from the PRC’s Academy of Science and Chinese University of Hong Kong; and altogether 21 academics from the PRC (mainly from the Academy of Sciences) and four from Hong Kong have contributed to this volume. It results from a conference held at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in early December 2000.

Xin jingji yu zhongguo xibu kaifa provides a wealth of information about the social and economic environment of the western region organised thematically. An introductory section on the new strategy is followed by others dealing with natural conditions; urbanisation and communications; human resource management; tourism and environmental protection; and the investment environment. There is also a section on Hong Kong and the development of the western region. Although most of the contributions approach the west of China as a whole, there are a few chapters that are concerned with only parts of the wider region. These include studies of the Mongolian grasslands, of the development of Chongqing, and of ecological tourism in Qinghai.

A key problem in understanding the evolution and impact of the new policy to “Open Up the West”—one for which the authors and editors of this volume are certainly not responsible—is the conceptualisation of the western region. Despite more recent appeals to history, China’s west has long been an imprecise political and social construct. When the Chinese imperial state was in its expansionist phases, this was unsurprising, as the location of the west as well as its social and cultural characteristics inevitably changed(1). However, imprecision, doubt and discussion also attended identification of China’s west more generally, not simply in terms of state definitions of territorial boundaries but also because it has long been a crucial factor in the determination of what might constitute ‘Chineseness’. Allied to this role of cultural catalyst, the west of China has also been seen as a source of the exotic(2).

Under the PRC the definition of its west has been far from constant. During the Mao-dominated era of China’s politics the CCP talked about a north-west region—the provincial-level units of Shaanxi, Ningxia, Gansu, Qinghai and Xinjiang—and a south-west region—Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou and the Tibet Autonomous Region. By the early 1980s Chinese geographers had started to discuss China’s west in terms of Xinjiang, Tibet, Qinghai, Gansu, Ningxia and Inner Mongolia. Of those provincial-level units now to be included in the newly-defined west, the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region was at this time included in the coastal region; Shaanxi, Sichuan, Yunnan and Guizhou were included in the central region.

Imprecision about the boundaries and location of the west has even continued into discussion of the formula to “Open Up the West”. The first articulations of this new policy during late 1999 and into 2000 mostly defined the west in terms of ten provincial-level units: the Xinjiang, Tibet and Ningxia Autonomous Regions; Qinghai, Gansu, Shaanxi, Sichuan, Yunnan and Guizhou Provinces; and Chongqing Municipality(3). However, starting in about October 2000 the west came to be defined in terms of 12 provincial-level units, with the addition of the Inner Mongolia and Guangxi Autonomous Regions(4).

Reference to China’s west in the new policy to “Open Up the West” would appear to be fundamentally metaphorical. While it is quite clear that the west, as now defined, has from the perspective of the provincial-level some of the greatest concentrations of poverty, ethnic minorities and poor economic infrastructure in the PRC, a description in these terms highlights neither common nor exclusive characteristics. The provincial-level units in the west are generally socially and economically disadvantaged, but not exclusively so, and they are not all equally disadvantaged. Xinjiang, which is one of the economic success stories of the 1990s because of its sustained growth rates, has achieved a GDP per capita that compares favourably with provinces such as Hainan, supposedly in the heart of the global economy, or Jilin, part of an earlier industrial centre. In 1999, GDP per capita in Xinjiang was 6,470 yuan, compared to 6,383 yuan in Hainan, and 6,341 yuan in Jilin.

The extent of foreign investment and the growth of share-holding enterprises are usually regarded as indicators of progress in economic reform. Certainly in those terms the provincial-level units of the west remain characterised by the predominance of the state sector, and do not compare well with the economies of the large municipalities or coastal provinces. At the same time the levels of foreign investment and share-holding enterprises in Inner Mongolia, Chongqing and Sichuan compare well with other parts of China.

On the other hand, medical provision, as measured by the number of doctors per capita, is generally not low in the west, and even compares favourably—except for Guangxi and Guizhou—with the coastal provinces. Primary school participation rates are low in Tibet and Qinghai, but elsewhere in the west, no lower than much of the rest of the PRC. In general, provinces such as Anhui, Jiangxi, Shanxi and Henan face equally as severe problems of social and economic disadvantage as most of the disadvantaged provincial-level units of the west.

Most of the PRC’s population of minority nationalities are located in the newly-designated west, and in seven of its provincial-level units more than a quarter of the population are so classified. Nonetheless, Sichuan has proportionately very few non-Han Chinese, and Shaanxi has almost none; while there are significant ethnic minority populations elsewhere in the PRC, notably in the north-east and on Hainan. Certainly the economic infrastructure that supports development and integrates the western provincial-level units with each other and with the rest of the PRC is generally weak, but there are many other parts of the PRC where this problem is at least as equally apparent, notably Anhui, Jiangxi and Shanxi(5). In parts of the west, notably Chongqing, Sichuan and even to some extent Xinjiang, the economic infrastructure though by no means at the standard of Peking or Shanghai is by the same token far from weak.

As these remarks suggest, there are significant social, economic and political differences across and within the west’s various provincial-level units. The concentration of ethnic minorities may provide a political commonality but it masks an intense cultural diversity. In any case, an area with a large number of one non-Han ethnic group, such as Tibet, almost certainly has a different political dynamic to an area that has a number of different (and still fairly substantial) non-Han ethnic groups, such as Qinghai. Nor for that matter, do all areas with large concentrations of non-Han peoples necessarily sustain separatist political movements of any kind, as would seem to be the case in both Tibet and Xinjiang. The dominance of the state sector in the economies of each of the provincial-level units similarly masks differences in patterns of production and industrialisation. The economically dominant state-run light industry in Yunnan is almost exclusively concerned with tobacco processing, but in Xinjiang state-run light industry produces and manufactures; whereas both are considerably different to the development of an almost exclusively state-run heavy industrial base in Chongqing.

In short, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the campaign to “Open Up the West” is best understood in its wider political contexts, rather than in terms of its social and economic environment. Despite the call to “Open Up the West” the new policy is not about a region, nor for that matter really a policy in any focussed and more usual sense of the word. Very little detail has been provided as part of government strategy, and while various estimates have been made outside the PRC about the amounts to be invested as part of its implementation, no formal announcements of costs, investments and commitments for the programme as a whole have been made domestically. China’s west in this context is not so much a region as a state project, designed to increase equality, to encourage nation-building, and to colonise those parts of the PRC less integrated into Chinese society.