Core Content

Regional coordinated development plays a significant role in implementing the new development philosophy and achieving high-quality economic growth. Hunan’s regional location in the Belt and Area Initiative has strengthened its strategic importance and elevated the expectations for Hunan’s contribution to the nationwide regional coordinated development. Hunan is expected to leverage its regional advantages and act in the larger picture to obtain more driving forces.

As a country with vast territory and a large population, China has faced significant regional differences and unbalanced development. The 20th National Congress of the CPC emphasized the importance of continuing to advance regional coordinated development, which is vital to China’s overall economic and social development, as well as building a modern economic system. A deeper understanding of its profound connotations and importance can help to solve the problem of unbalanced development and promote high-quality economic growth.

New Location

For more than five decades, Hunan’s overall industrial strength had been rapidly improving thanks to the Third-Front Movement (a movement of industrial migration to strengthen our country’s defense capabilities and improve productivity distribution in the 1960s and 1970s). However, during the initial stages of the reform and opening up, Hunan’s development was relatively slow until the policy of the Rise of Central China was implemented in 2006. With its regional advantages, Hunan began to develop faster but was still searching for a distinct location in the national regional coordinated development.

In November 2003, President Xi Jinping briefed on Hunan’s regional location of the Belt and Area for the first time and specified its missions in national regional coordinated development. President Xi stated that Hunan should make good use of its regional advantages as the transitional belt of the eastern coastal areas and the central and western regions, and the convergent area of the Yangtze River economic belt and the coastal economic belt. Hunan should grasp the opportunity of industrial gradient transfer and national support for the development of the Midwest, improve its economic growth and competitiveness, and accelerate the formation of a new development pattern with a reasonable structure, optimized measures, and integrated rural and urban areas.

New Demands

The great practices since the 18th CPC National Congress have enriched the connotations of regional coordinated development that we should make good use of the advantages of every region to achieve common prosperity.

President Xi put forward new demands on Hunan to take good advantage of its unique location. Firstly, Hunan was required to develop its advantages to improve its comprehensive economic strength and competitiveness; secondly, Hunan needed to find out its local features to secure development opportunities; thirdly, Hunan should integrate into national development and global competitions to improve its strength.

New Deployment

Under the guidance of CPC and President Xi, a series of principles have been put forward in national regional coordinated development, including systematic development, green development, global governance and people-centered policy.

Hunan’s regional coordinated development matters to provincial high-quality development and the national regional coordinated development on the new journey. Based on Hunan’s regional advantages and combined with the development philosophies of the CPC, the following will be done: Firstly, the construction of sea, land and air passages will be accelerated to promote regional exchanges. Secondly, a broader agenda of internal and external opening up will be advanced to leverage regional advantages for more development vitality. Lastly, collaboration with other industries to innovate new regional economic cooperative ways will be pursued.

(Translated by LI Lan and YANG Ye)