China’s regional inequalities increasingly worry Beijing
So in 2000 China launched the “go west” strategy to help its western provinces. In 2003 a similar plan was unveiled to revitalise the north-east. … For a time these policies helped to bridge the gap between regions. In the 15 years after the go-west plan was put in place, gdp per person in western provinces rose from just 35% of coastal levels to 54%. In the north-east, it rose from 62% to 71%. Abject poverty is now rare in the hinterlands. But in the past ten years regional inequality has remained sticky—or got worse. Today residents of western provinces earn about 57% as much as those on the coast. North-easterners earn 48% as much. Many locals seem to have given up on the north-east. Its population shrank by 10% between 2010 and 2020 because of low birth rates and emigration. …. Government spending per high-school student in the west is just 60% of that in the east. Of China’s top 100 universities, only 16 are in the west. The predictable result is less dynamism. China’s eastern provinces and cities have five times as many high-tech firms as the hinterland.
Source: Economist