ABSTRACT
The strategy of embarking on the long-term development of the western region of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) emerged in 1999. It is legitimised as having been part of Deng Xiaoping’s analysis of the ‘two overall situations’ (liang ge daju) which envisaged the economic development of the coastal regions as the priority, followed by the inland territories of China’s west, regions that are remote from the centre of power and predominantly poor and backward. Development began under Jiang Zemin and his ‘third-generation’ leadership but, after the Sixteenth National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 2002, although Hu Jintao and the ‘fourth generation’ continued to implement the policy of economic development in the region, there was far less rhetoric about ‘western development’ as a programme.
