China's West Region Development - Domestic Strategies and Global Implications

China's West Region Development: Domestic Strategies and Global Implications, edited by Ding Lu and William A. W. Neilson. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd, 2004. xiv + 578 pp. US$64.00 (hardcover). and medical engineering, and environmental-protection products are three leading high-tech industries that will be nurtured and enhanced (p. 451). Meanwhile, the Five Big Preferential The western developmental program (WDP) introduced in 1999 marks a shift in China's coast-oriented development. China's Western Region Development contains 23 academic and policy-oriented analyses and assessments of the program that were presented at a conference in Canada in 2003. Although Part I supposedly deals with the objectives of the WDP, it also contains intense discussion on the best tools for executing it. Dwight Perkins' paper suggests that the crux of the program is to get the markets to work, either through mass migration into western or coastal cities or by attracting capital inflows into the west. The chapter by Zheng Yuxin and Qian Yihong argues, however, that a compensation scheme necessary to sustain ecological protection can work only through non-market mechanisms. A solid report by Zhao Xiusheng, Dai Jian and Shen Hong on water management in the Tarim Basin in Xinjiang Province insists that attention should be paid to property rights, communal interests and micro-management. Robert Bedeski argues that the WDP aims at integrating frontier regions tightly into the nation. Part II is devoted to the institutions and mechanisms of the western program, and also presents a complex picture of the area's political economy and environment. Li Shantong, Hou Yongzhi and Feng Jie examine four economic belts, one of which is in the west. Wang Shaoguang concludes that the central fiscal transfers favor provinces with more severe ethnic separatism, ones that have suffered greater losses from natural disasters and ones that have greater national representation. Gregory Chin gives a much-needed detailed examination of policy-making and implementation in the WDP. Dodo Thampapillai, Euston Quah and Shandre Thangavelu model the environmenteconomy relationship of forestation. Neal Stoskopf, Glen Filson, J. Simpson and L. Kannenberg report on a Canada-China joint project to address environmental degradation and poverty along the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers. Part III examines the effectiveness and efficiency of the program. Shi Yulong and Du Ping, two officials involved in China's western program, propose that the focus of the WDP should shift to poverty alleviation, education and health in the countryside. Lin Ling and Liu Shiqing argue that, though the five mega-projects in the western program benefit the country, the East-West gap is still widening. Zhiming Feng and Pengtao Zhang suggest that the grainfor-green policy that forbids farming on mountain slopes significantly affects the well-being of the local populace and ecology and should be implemented first in the ecologically most sensitive areas. Ding Lu and Elspeth Thomson find that transport infrastructure and institutional reforms can also affect market-access conditions and the regional income gap. Yu Li looks at education in Sichuan in the early twentieth century and argues that education does not suffice to produce economic growth. Part IV is devoted to the distribution of the benefits and costs of the program. Liu Shiqing and Lin Ling argue that environmental and infrastructure construction face major challenges. Shuming Bao and Wing Thye Woo examine urban-rural, inter-city and inter-regional migration flows and analyze the causes of migration. Govind Kelkar presents an empirical study of the changes in gender relations and the ecological effects of tourism development in Lijiang, Yunnan. …

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