Government and Policy
Major support package in pipeline for Xinjiang
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2010-05-17 23:03
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BEIJING: China's central government is believed to be on the the verge of unveiling a major support package to help boost development and bring lasting stability in the far western Xinjiang region rocked by a deadly riot last year.
An imminent move has been heralded by measures earlier this year to lay the groundwork for a comprehensive support scheme.
From April 7 to May 8, government delegations from 19 affluent provinces and cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong and Shenzhen, visited the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region to discuss detailed plans to boost the region's development.
"Although Xinjiang has experienced rapid development in recent years, it is still lagging behind other provinces and facing restrictions in capital, technology, skills, management and other areas," said Dong Zhaowu, of the Xinjiang Autonomous Regional Academy of Social Sciences.
The "roadmap" unveiled at the March meeting is aimed at achieving a "marked" development in Xinjiang's economy and a "marked" improvement in living standards within five years.
It aims to narrow the gap between Xinjiang and other inland regions as much as possible over 10 years and guarantee that Xinjiang fulfills the goal of achieving a "moderately prosperous society in all aspects" by 2020.
"On its own resources and strength, it is hard for Xinjiang to resolve all the issues within a short period," Dong said.
In January, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) announced that a central work conference would be held this year to discuss Xinjiang's development, a top-level meeting widely expected to unveil a string of polices to boost development.
No official statement has been made about the specific date of the top-level conference, but analysts believe the March 29-30 meeting, attended by Vice Premier Li Keqiang and senior leader Zhou Yongkang, and the subsequent "investigation tours" by the 19 provinces and cities to Xinjiang are all "warm-up" moves for the event.
In addition, personnel changes in Xinjiang, in which former Party chief of Hunan Province Zhang Chunxian replaced Wang Lequan as Xinjiang's Party chief late last month, are also considered by some observers a harbinger of greater support.
"The central work conference is a very important meeting when Xinjiang's reform and opening-up and socialist modernization drive enter a critical period," Zhang was quoted as saying by Monday's Xinjiang Daily.
"Through the meeting, the CPC Central Committee is to mobilize the strength of the entire Party and the entire nation to ... guarantee that Xinjiang fulfills the goal of achieving a moderately prosperous society in all aspects at the same time as all other provinces and regions by 2020," he told Xinjiang officials in Beijing Sunday.
Ten months after the riot in the regional capital, Urumqi, that left 197 people dead and more than 1,700 injured in July last year, Internet services in Xinjiang had fully resumed, another sign the situation was returning to normal and the region was preparing for a fresh new start.
