Government and Policy

Xinjiang takes a leaf out of Sichuan's book

By Cui Jia (China daily)
Updated: 2010-05-21 07:44

Beijing - The central government has quantified the amount 19 provinces and municipalities appointed to assist the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region will contribute financially from next year, a senior official said.

Jurat Imin says aid to each selected area in Xinjiang will increase 8 percent a year.

"An older partner assistance program had been running in Xinjiang since 1996," said Jurat Imin, deputy Party chief of the region's Hotan prefecture, which will be partnered with Anhui province, as well as with Beijing and Tianjin municipalities.

"However, this latest scenario has, for the first time, clearly quantified the targets for the supporting provinces and municipalities, as China seeks to fast track development to the region."

All 19 provinces and municipalities designated as partners are required to contribute 0.3 to 0.6 percent of their fiscal revenue from 2011 to 2020 to support Xinjiang's development, he said.

In the past, no amount was specified for how much money they had to invest, which made it impossible to measure exactly how much effort they put into the program, according to Jurat.

The investment in each selected area in Xinjiang will increase 8 percent a year throughout the first five years of the program, he added

The new partner assistance model in Xinjiang, where riots erupted in July 2009, leaving at least 197 people dead and more than 1,700 injured, has been copied from the Wenchuan earthquake recovery model. The Wenchuan earthquake, which occurred in Sichuan and neighboring provinces just over two years ago, claimed more than 80,000 lives.

As the direct economic cost of the earthquake was almost 980 billion yuan ($140 billion), far beyond Sichuan's economic capacity, the State Council twinned each severely affected county with one of 19 provinces or municipalities, which are required to donate at least 1 percent of their annual fiscal revenue towards reconstruction projects until next year.

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The same 19 provinces or municipalities will provide aid to Xinjiang starting in 2011, the same year that the Wenchuan assistance program ends. As in the case of Wenchuan, significant results are expected over the next five years.

"Providing sufficient financial support to the region is the goal of the new partner assistance program, while the old program concentrated more on providing management expertise and training for local officials," explained Jurat.

"Allocating aid to county-level administrations could help the (twinned provinces and municipalities) gain an edge in targeting the problems that constrain the development of the regions involved, so that the aid can be concentrated on the right spot. That's an experience gained from the Sichuan earthquake."

Beijing will now only need to take care of Hotan city, as well as Pishan and Luopu counties, whereas it used to provide aid for all of Hotan prefecture. The other counties in the prefecture will receive aid from Anhui and Tianjin, Jurat added.

The ultimate goal the central government has set for aid providing partners is to improve the living standards of Xinjiang residents, Jurat said.

Xinjiang will receive more than 10 billion yuan in economic aid next year from its 19 partners. The amount is almost half of all the investment made in the region by its twinning partners between 1996 and 2008.