Xi calls for more coordination of regional growth

President Xi Jinping has called for further steps to optimize the collaboration program between eastern and western regions of China to enhance coordinated regional development and boost the common prosperity drive.

In an instruction published on Wednesday, Xi highlighted the need to draw on the successful experience from the cooperation between Fujian province in East China and the Ningxia Hui autonomous region in Northwest China in refining the practice.

Xi, who is also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, commended the collaboration model for contributing to China's poverty alleviation drive and promoting coordinated regional growth over the past 30 years.

In 1996, China launched the program of East-West Pairing-off Cooperation for Poverty Reduction, whereby a developed provincial region in the east assisted a less-developed region in the west.

After China secured a victory in eliminating absolute poverty in 2021, the country put in place a five-year transition period to continue supporting people and regions that had emerged from poverty, ensuring a smooth transition from poverty alleviation to rural vitalization while guarding against any large-scale relapse into poverty. With the transition period now over, regular assistance programs start from this year, which also marks the beginning of the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30) period.

The president stressed in the instruction the need to improve the east-west collaboration mechanism, optimize cooperation methods and expand the areas of cooperation.

The goal is to promote industrial complementarity, personnel exchanges, mutual learning in technology, exchanges of ideas and mutual learning in work styles between eastern and western regions, in order to achieve mutual benefit, win-win outcomes and common development, he said.

Xi urged Party committees and governments at all levels to earnestly fulfill their responsibilities in regular assistance programs, firmly prevent any large-scale relapse into poverty, and advance all-around rural vitalization.

The instruction from Xi was conveyed at a work conference on Wednesday in Yinchuan, the capital of Ningxia.

Vice-Premier Liu Guozhong said at the conference that more work must be done to deepen industrial cooperation and labor collaboration between eastern and western regions and to strengthen exchanges of officials and professionals.

He highlighted the need to expand cooperation in science and technology, finance and other fields, and to carry out creative initiatives tailored to local conditions.

While serving as a provincial leader in Fujian province in the late 1990s, Xi personally oversaw the progress of pairing-off cooperation between Fujian and Ningxia.

Wang Jian, head of Ningxia's regional department of agriculture and rural affairs, said last week that the annual per capita disposable income of rural residents in Ningxia has risen from about 1,400 yuan ($207) in 1996 to more than 20,000 yuan in 2025.

Over the past three decades, Fujian has provided 7.68 billion yuan in assistance funding to Ningxia for infrastructure projects. Fujian has also encouraged over 1,600 enterprises to invest in Ningxia, Wang added.

xuwei@chinadaily.com.cn