In the last two decades, China's western inland region has largely been left out of the nation's economic boom. While its 355-million population accounts for 28% and its land area for 71% of China's total, the region's share of the national GDP is under 20%. Since 1999, Beijing has implemented the West China Development Program to boost the region's growth. To study the major domestic issues and the global implications of this program, the University of Victoria's Centre for Asia-Pacific Initiatives organized and hosted a multidisciplinary international conference on March 6?8, 2003. This volume of papers presented at the conference offers perspectives on the issues by leading experts of diversified academic disciplines from China, Canada, the US, and other countries.

In the last two decades, China's western inland region has largely been left out of the nation's economic boom. While its 355-million population accounts for 28% and its land area for 71% of China's total, the region's share of the national GDP is under 20%. Since 1999, Beijing has implemented the West China Development Program to boost the region's growth. To study the major domestic issues and the global implications of this program, the University of Victoria's Centre for Asia-Pacific Initiatives organized and hosted a multidisciplinary international conference on March 6-8, 2003. This volume of papers presented at the conference offers perspectives on the issues by leading experts of diversified academic disciplines from China, Canada, the US, and other countries.

In the last two decades, China's western inland region has largely been left out of the nation's economic boom. While its 355-million population accounts for 28% and its land area for 71% of China's total, the region's share of the national GDP is under 20%. Since 1999, Beijing has implemented the West China Development Program to boost the region's growth. To study the major domestic issues and the global implications of this program, the University of Victoria's Centre for Asia-Pacific Initiatives organized and hosted a multidisciplinary international conference on March 6OCo8, 2003. This volume of papers presented at the conference offers perspectives on the issues by leading experts of diversified academic disciplines from China, Canada, the US, and other countries. Sample Chapter(s). Introduction: West China Development Issues and Challenges (3,355 KB). Contents: Goals and Objectives: Designing a Regional Development Strategy for China (D Perkins); Eco-Environmental Protection and Poverty-Alleviation in West China Development (Y Zheng & Y Qian); Western China: Human Security and National Security (R Bedeski); Coordinating Institutions and Mechanism: A New Pattern of Regional Co-operation in China: Four Economic Belts Across East to West (S Li et al.); The Political Logic of Fiscal Transfers in China (S Wang); An Introductory Environmental Macroeconomic Framework for China: Implications for West China Development (D Thampapillai et al.); Enhancing the Western China Development Strategy (WCDS): Innovative Approaches (N C Stoskopf et al.); Effectiveness and Efficiency: On the UrbanOCoRural Relationship in Western Region Development Program (Y Shi & P Du); The Western Region's Growth Potential (D Lu & E Thomson); Measuring the Impact of the OC Five Mega-ProjectsOCO (L Lin & S Liu); Education and Development: A Historical Experience of Sichuan (Y Li); Distribution of Benefits and Costs: The New Challenges Facing the Development of West China (S Liu & L Lin); Migration Scenarios and Western China Development: The Evidence from 2000 Population Census Data (S Bao & W T Woo); Gender Relations, Tourism and Ecological Effects in Lijiang, China (G Kelkar); Sources of Interregional Disparity: The Relative Contributions of Location and Preferential Policies in China's Regional Development (S Demurger et al.); Urbanization and West China Development (D Lu & W T Woo); China's Regional Disparities in 1978OCo2000 (Z Lu & S Song); and other papers. Readership: Researchers, academics, students and business consultants interested in China and its development."

From macro and micro perspectives, this book provides a panoramic view of China's sprawling western region. China's twelve western provinces are examined through several critical thematic dimensions.

China has emerged as a dominant power in Eurasian affairs that not only exercises significant political and economic power, but increasingly, ideational power too. Since the founding of the People’s Republic, Chinese Communist Party leaders have sought to increase state capacity and exercise more effective control over their western frontier through a series of state-building initiatives. Although these initiatives have always incorporated an international component, the collapse of the USSR, increasing globalization, and the party’s professed concerns about terrorism, separatism, and extremism have led to a region-building project in Eurasia. Garcia traces how domestic elite-led narratives about security and development generate state-building initiatives, and then region-building projects. He also assesses how region-building projects are promoted through narratives of the historicity of China’s engagement in Eurasia, the promotion of norms of non-interference, and appeals to mutual development. Finally, he traces the construction of regions through formal and informal institutions as well as integrative infrastructure. By presenting three phases of Chinese domestic state-building and region-building from 1988-present, Garcia shows how region-building projects have enabled China to increase state capacity, control, and development in its western frontier. Recommended for scholars of China’s international relations and development policy.

First published in 1989. This book considers two major aspect of China's economic reform: the 'open policy' towards the West, aimed at attracting technology and skills into the country and the emphasis on 'regionalization' which established market-orientated rather than bureaucratically-controlled patterns of economic development.

The book provides a systematic review of research results on regional economic competitiveness, and constructs an evaluation index system based on nine key aspects: the development of a micro-economy; industrial development; enterprise strength; the sciences; education; innovation; environment governance and protection; financial development; and the degree of opening to the outside world. The book subsequently provides policy suggestions on how to enhance the economic and social development of the West of China based on a comprehensive evaluation and analysis. In addition to comparing the recent social development of the provinces in the West, the book also calls upon the central government to play the leading role, encourage mass participation and promote the opening up of the West of China.

In an unprecedented exploration of space and power in rural Xinjiang, a Chinese region home to the Muslim population of the Uyghurs, this book adopts a grounded theory approach and a trans-ethnic perspective into the complex and sensitive topic of land issues and agricultural land evictions in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. By exposing the dynamics of land acquisition and power building in the politically contested space of the region, the author shows how state owned land in a key commercial and cultural hub on the new Silk Road became a commodity, in a context of violent human interactions driven by power. Relying on previously undisclosed material and on a unique field research among farmers and local authorities, the author retraces the steps of Uyghur peasant workers, entangled in a suspended situation between abandoned rural villages, migration and urban alienation, in a book which explores agency in violent processes of social change, and adds concepts and insights to the current knowledge of how we become modern citizens. The microcosm of Kashgar, an oasis-city in Xinjiang, acts as a mirror reflecting socio political dynamics framing people’s identity. Shedding light on one of the most inaccessible region in China, this book is a key read for academics and a broader public willing to get a clearer view of one of the sourest power struggle in the most contested region within the next superpower.