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China Campaign To Open Up The West

In the campaign to “Open up the West”, the policy measures are quite vague, with many calling the whole campaign a ‘soft policy’.   There are several agendas and the priorities of the different aspects of the campaign change regularly. Before I start explaining the measures that are being implemented, I will first define what is classified as the ‘west’.   The regions in ‘the west’ are the Chongqing Municipality, Guizhou Province, Sichuan Province, Yunnan Province, the Tibet Autonomous Region, Shaanxi Province, Gansu Province, the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, Qinghai Province, the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, and the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.   There are also ethnic minority autonomous prefectures located in other provinces which are classified as part of the ‘west’, and they are the Xianxi Tujia-Miao Autonomous Prefecture of Hunan Province, the Enshi Tujia-Miao Autonomous Prefecture of Hubei Province, and the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture of Jilin Province.  

Now that we know what ‘the west’ of China is, I will begin by talking about where this idea to open up the west came from.   This idea is not a new one; the Chinese leaders have been toying with the idea since around the 1920s, although their agendas and implementation have varied.   Just after World War 1 the first attempt to open up the west was made by Sun Yat-sen through his publication of The International Development of China.   Here he argued that by foreigners investing in the west the huge Chinese market that foreign powers were after would eventually be created.   Shortly after this policy was announced China became a communist country and so was closed to foreign investment.

The next attempt was made by Mao in the 1960s with his ‘Third Front strategy’, which was originally to develop the economy and social aspects of interior China, but ended but being implemented for national defence.   It is claimed that the original Third Front strategy...