During a visit to the southwestern province of Guizhou – one of China’s poorest and most indebted areas – President Xi Jinping called for the region to undertake an accelerated economic transition, improve its business climate and better integrate with the country’s other local economies.
The president’s inspection tour to the mountainous province on Monday and Tuesday – his first after the conclusion of the annual legislative session – also represents a commitment to maintain the country’s fight against poverty, analysts said.
Unlike the eastern and coastal regions that are being incentivised by state policies to spearhead China’s tech innovation, less well-off provinces such as Guizhou have been encouraged to play to their strengths by specialising in modern, efficient mountain agriculture and building other competitive industries.
The tour follows a meeting between Xi and representatives from Jiangsu province, one of China’s wealthiest, where the president urged officials to take the lead in regional integration and coordinated development.
Guizhou’s per-capita gross domestic product was ranked fourth-lowest among the country’s provincial-level jurisdictions. Several of its counties were the last to be removed from the national register of impoverished localities in 2020, the year China declared victory over absolute poverty.
But with assets like the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope – the world’s second-largest single-dish radio telescope – a national big data centre, and data facilities for Apple, Huawei Technologies and Tencent, the province also carries strategic importance.
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