ABSTRACT
In November 1999, nearly two years before the 9.11 tragedy, the Chinese government commenced the campaign to ‘Open Up the West’ and pledged that the development of China’s interior regions would be a crucial component of its mission to build a ‘well-off society’ throughout China by mid twenty-first century.1 The campaign was publicly described as the next logical and planned stage in China’s modernisation process featuring a sequential coast-first-andinland-second model. Underlying the official rhetoric, however, was a widespread unease over the widening regional disparities and their potential impact on social stability and national integration.
