A result of the reform and opening-up of China

The reform and opening-up policy is the key to the development of contemporary China. The central government established Liangjiang New Area to promote the development and opening-up in the west, and it also symbolizes the fact that the strategy of developing and opening up is moving from the east part of the country to the west part. It corresponds to Deng Xiaoping's "two overall situations" policy and is also the natural result of the reform and opening-up moving from the developed coastal areas to the central and western areas.

The central and western areas which have a long history and culture are also rapidly opening to the interior and going global.

An important achievement of the strategic restructuring of development in China

The drawbacks of promoting the economy only by external requirements are increasingly obvious as a result of the global financial crisis. While maintaining the dynamism of the external market, China must improve the population's standard of living and expand consumption so as to boost the reform and development of the interior. China's shift in development strategy requires it to explore the huge domestic market. China - with 1/5 of the world's population - is expected to become the second consumption market in the world by 2015, as the country's central and western regions have the greatest potential - and occupy 80 percent of the national territory. Chongqing's Liangjiang New Area, which connects China's east and west regions, the north to the south - and affects the huge market in the central and western regions - has risen to a national scale and become an important achievement of the strategic restructuring of the country's development.

A success story of the large-scale development in China's west region and in the new decade

Over the past decade, China has achieved great progress in the development of its central and western regions, and projects - such as the South-to-North Water Diversion, West-to-East natural gas transmission and West-to-East electric power transmission- accelerated the pace of economic development. However, for various reasons, there is still a relative unbalance in regional development in China. The GDP in the country's western region rises 1 percent point slower than in the eastern region, and the overall amount has expanded from 3 trillion a decade ago to 11 trillion today. The average GDP has risen from 6,430 yuan ($1,060) to 18,000 yuan, and industrialization involves only 1/4 of the eastern region - which is home to 60 percent of the country's low-income residents, whose basic pension insurance is only half of the amount of residents in the eastern region. The state aims to maintain balance in regional development and its strategy involves narrowing the gap between the eastern region and the central and western regions - by aggressively promoting development in the central and western regions.