The relationship between the east and the west in regional economic development

The relationship between the east and the west has been an important issue in China's regional economic development. Historically, Mao Zedong expounded the relationship in his On Ten Relations and made a series of measures to solve the contradiction between the east and the west. His most important measure is to Construction of Remote Areas Away From Coastal Regions. After reform and opening to the outside world, Deng Xiaoping made strategic thinking on solution to the contradiction between the east and the west and put forward development of important regions and Two Overall Situations. Development strategy of eastern coastal areas was completely implemented and in each province the important regions were firstly developed and then other regions were developed. Development of eastern part increased China's national competence but the gap between the east and the west is increasing. This is not only a problem of economic development and a problem of residents' income but also problems of nationality, religion and border areas. Thus in 1999 Jiang Zemin put forward western development and Jiang's aim is to realize Deng's Two Overall Situations strategy. Western development implemented coordination development of the east,the middle and the west areas and achieves great success and contributes a lot to the country. But the gap between the east and the west is still increasing. Because of the change of situation, system and mechanism, implementation of Deng's Two Overall Situations strategy must reexamine western development. From now on, the first thing is to develop important areas and then to develop other areas. The second is that we should not purely exploit west resources and should let the west areas utilize their own resources and should form western research-exploitation-processing industrial chain. The third is that we should especially focus on the development of agriculture and education and should solve the problems such as land erosion of peasants, unemployment and lack of guarantee.