Author: Björn Alpermann
9 October 2024
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is gearing up to reinvigorate one of the most impactful and controversial campaigns aimed at its Western regions – home to many of its ethnic minorities. This blog post looks at how the new approach differs from the campaign’s earlier version and what that may mean for minoritized ethnic groups.
The provinces and regions involved in Great Western Development (source: © OpenStreetMap contributors: https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright/en)
A quarter of a century ago, in 1999, China’s leadership announced the start of a new campaign called “Great Western Development” (GWD, 西部大开发xibu da kaifa). Its practical implementation commenced in 2000 when it was first mentioned in the annual government work report in March and then spelled out in greater detail in a State Council document in December. The goal of this campaign was to redress the imbalances in economic development between the booming coastal region and inland and border regions that had widened considerably over the first two decades of Reform and Opening. The term “West” here is not to be taken in a strictly geographical sense. For instance, the Autonomous Region of Inner Mongolia, which is included in this political definition of China’s West, stretches far into the Northeast of the country. Its inclusion in the campaign had more to do with its minoritized ethnic population and its being seen as a “periphery” in cultural, historical and political terms. With its heavy focus on large-scale investments in infrastructure (especially transportation but also energy), the GWD is often seen as a precursor to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI, 一带一路倡议 yi dai yi lu changyi), announced by CCP general-secretary Xi Jinping in late 2013. The BRI transcends the GWD with its outward orientation beyond the borders of the PRC and, by now, its omnidirectional approach. But both share the vision of transforming Western China not just economically (less “underdeveloped”), but also socially (more “modern”), culturally (more alike to mainstream Han society), and politically (fully under the Party-state’s control). Because BRI is directly associated with the current Party leadership, GWD, which started under Xi Jinping’s predecessors, has subsequently taken a backseat. However, this may be about to change.
A New Push in a “New Era”
In 2020, after two decades of implementation, the CCP Central Committee and State Council jointly took stock of what the GWD campaign had achieved in their “Guiding Opinions on Promoting the Formation of a New Pattern of Western Development in the New Era”. In the view of the leadership, it had contributed to reducing regional disparities, safeguarding ethnic solidarity, and maintaining social stability and state security. The document did not pick up on criticism that the GWD had brought an influx of Han to the West and thereby heightened inter-ethnic tensions. However, the leadership recognized some persisting problems and proposed a new more quality-oriented development paradigm (高质量发展 gao zhiliang fazhan). This would include more market-oriented reforms and opening up to the outside (in conjunction with BRI) as well as stronger focus on ecological preservation. The lengthy “Guiding Opinions” document also speaks of speeding up urbanization and actively directing rural labor transfers and the return of migrant workers to the countryside to set up businesses there. More ominously, the use of Mandarin Chinese, or “the national common language” (国家通用语言 guojia tongyong yuyan), should be implemented throughout the education system. Thus, the general thrust of a holistic transformation of China’s West was reemphasized. Likewise, a subsequent document issued by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) in 2021 seems to simply promise more of the same instead of a new approach. If one is to detect a slight shift in rhetoric, it may be in the fact that it presented ecological questions of the Western region as an issue affecting the survival of the whole “Chinese nation” (中华民族 Zhonghua minzu).
This new emphasis on ecological questions has come much more to the fore with the most recent push for GWD in the “New Era” (新时代 xin shidai). In April 2024, Central Party leaders gathered for a GWD Forum at which Xi Jinping personally delivered an “important speech” that clearly emphasized the ecological aspects of development. The new slogan is “great (environmental) protection, great opening, high-quality development” (大保护、大开放、高质量发展 da baohu, da kaifang, gao zhiliang fazhan). It is not coincidental but highly symbolic that this places ecological considerations first. The Tibetan Plateau, for example, is seen primarily as “the water tower of the Chinese nation” (中华水塔 Zhonghua shuita), while water management in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) should be transformed using scientific approaches. Moreover, the West is presented as a source for “green power” (绿色动能 lüse dongneng) because of its huge potential and increasing installed capacity for generating wind and solar energy to be exported to the Eastern part of the country (西电东送 xidian dongsong).
On April 23, Xi Jinping hosted a symposium on promoting the development of western China in the new era in Chongqing. Photo by Ju Peng (Xinhua News Agency).
These initial announcements of a renewed push and slightly revised strategy for Western development were followed by a trip to Qinghai province and Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region in the Northwest, undertaken by Xi Jinping in June, during which he emphasized the themes of ecology, high-quality development and ethnic unity. In media reporting of around the same time on the “new pattern” (新格局 xin geju) of GWD, the region is no longer seen as isolated and remote, but as well-connected and as integral part of the Chinese domestic economy. According to one editorial in an official outlet, this gives rise to “new ‘Western’ hope” (新“西”望 xin ‘xi’ wang).
Even more recently, on August 23, 2024, the Central Committee of the CCP held a meeting to pass a new GWD guiding document called “Some Policy Measures to Further Promote the Formation of a New Pattern in the Development of Western China” (进一步推动西部大开发形成新格局的若干政策措施 Jinyibu tuidong xibu da kaifa xingcheng xingeju de ruogan zhengce cuoshi). While this meeting has been reported on, the full text of the document is, unfortunately, not yet available publicly at the time of writing. But it was immediately followed by the Fourth Conference on Pairing Assistance to Tibet (第四次对口支援西藏工作会议 Disici duikou zhiyuan Xizang gongzuo huiyi), presided over by Politburo Standing Committee member Wang Huning, that pledged continued and long-term assistance in developing “a modern socialist new Tibet”.
Preliminary Assessment
Since many details are still missing, the picture that emerges right now is necessarily still blurry. But it seems clear enough that the current leadership is following an established pattern of “ideological layering”: By adding “new era” to an old slogan (xibu da kaifa) Xi Jinping has rebranded GWD and now “owns” it. These moves in CCP politics often entail giving policies a new direction without producing ruptures. In Xi’s own words, what we see is “a new chapter” (新篇章 xin pianzhang) in the “task of a century” to transform China’s West. GWD is not a discrete policy but rather an all-encompassing “macro-policy”, it serves as a framework for more concrete measures taken which can also diverge in various sub-regions of the Western regions. From the official documents and media reports I have so far seen, the most noteworthy trend is the more immediate emphasis on ecological questions over purely economic growth. This is a matter of shifting the balance, of course, since progress (or lack thereof) is still defined in economic terms as well. Nevertheless, the recent GWD policies seem more serious in their environmental concerns. That said, earlier research cautions us that policies justified on ecological grounds such as “returning the grassland“ (退草 tuicao) have meant that minoritized ethnic groups have had to give up their traditional life-styles. Some studies even find that the earlier GWD contributed to a worsening ecological situation. In addition, there are other “side effects”: The XUAR solar industry, which is promoted because it provides manufacturing jobs and “green energy” to be transferred eastward, has been entangled in forced labor allegations. Within the official emphasis on ecology, different parts of the Western region are made responsible for producing ecological services (storing water, generating green energy etc.) that primarily help the already more developed Eastern part. In other words, there is the potential that uneven patterns of development are being reproduced in yet another realm. Moreover, this is cast as a matter of national security, since, as the NDRC puts it: “The ecological environment in the West is not only related to the Western regions, but also to the whole country and to the future generations of the Chinese nation.” This is a framing that brooks no dissent. Thus, large-scale protests against the cultural destruction caused by hydropower projects in Tibetan inhabited areas of Sichuan province, which broke out in early 2024, have been quickly and harshly cracked down on. We will have to observe closely how the complex entanglement of ecology and national security plays out on the ground, and what the consequences will be for the minoritized ethnic groups inhabiting China’s vast Western region.
Maerdang Hydropower Station in Hainan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture (photo: Xinhua, source: Chinadaily.com.cn).
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