China launches new Go West development drive to counter post-coronavirus geopolitical risks
- China is looking to its western regions to help steady the economy amid friction with the US and potential isolation in the post-coronavirus world
- Beijing’s new Go West plan will build on its Western Development strategy, which had only mixed results in boosting regional growth after it was launched in 1999
This is the first story in a three-part series examining the Chinese government’s new Go West plan to develop the central and western regions of the country in response to growing challenges in the international environment.
In July 2013, while at the Port of Qinzhou in southwest China, Premier Li Keqiang summed up the government’s plan for handling an oncoming external economic shock.
With merchandise shipments to the United States and Europe beginning to stagnate at the time, China was looking to use ports like Qinzhou, in the Guangxi autonomous region, to tap emerging markets such as neighbouring Vietnam.
“When it is dark in the east, it is bright in the west,” Li told the gathered port workers, surrounded by stacks of multicoloured containers and towering cranes.
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Seven years later, China is once again looking to the west to help steady the economy in an increasingly unpredictable world.
Faced with threats of economic decoupling from the US and international hostility stemming from its handling of the coronavirus pandemic, China is trying to harness its vast and energy-rich western regions.
