Tale of Two Cities

Aid programs bring big changes from the Yangtze River Delta to a border county in Xinjiang

By staff reporter QIAO TIANBI

Build it and they will come: A highway under construction in Huocheng.

JIANGYIN is a prosperous county-level city in the Yangtze River Delta in the eastern coastal province of Jiangsu, and Huocheng is an underdeveloped county town way off on China’s western border in Ili Kazak Autonomous Prefecture of Xinjiang. If not for the aid-to-Xinjiang program initiated by the central government in 2002, the two cities and their people would never have had close contact. Over the last eight years 25 local officials, in groups of three, have been dispatched from Jiangsu to Huocheng on aid missions; but the unofficial number is much larger than that, as many of their friends and families have followed in their footsteps. Among them are Tang Zhongxian and Ding Bing-sheng, both Jiangyin citizens. Tang, sent by the government, is finishing his term of service and will soon return home. Ding, a private entrepreneur, has come to Huocheng at the community’s invitation, or more precisely, by persuasion – one of his friends was on the mission. Ding’s friend has gone back home now, but he and his family decided to stay. Their stories exemplify the kinds of benefits flowing from affluent eastern areas to underdeveloped western counterparts.

Tang Zhongxian: Infectious Enthusiasm

Tang Zhongxian has been serving as the executive deputy magistrate of Huocheng since July 2008; prior to his term of service, he had visited Huocheng only three times. He believes that the big gap between Jiangyin and Huocheng lay not in the speed of development but on the start time. Villages in Jiangyin and other places in southern Jiangsu had begun to set up factories as early as the late 1970s, and invited engineers from Shanghai to give technical guidance on weekends. At that time, however, Huocheng was in the grip of reacting to wars and famine, leaving no time or chance for economic progress.

Tang is keenly conscious of the lag time. Being in a remote area, Huocheng is isolated, and local officials – not to mention ordinary people – see little of the outside world. In his hometown it’s common for local officials to go abroad twice a year. In contrast, the magistrate of Huocheng, his boss, has been to Beijing only once; most of his colleagues have never even ventured to Urumqi, Xinjiang’s capital.

Such disparity, as Tang sees it, is due to an underactive local economy. So after he arrived on his new position, Tang pushed for a concerted program of invitations to invest, and included the prospecting work in the local budget. Then he led county officials around the country. In the beginning, many local officials weren’t clear on what would be involved, and saw the trips as opportunities to get in some travel while doing a little business. “On one occasion, we visited five provinces in seven days, taking seven flights and a train. We ended up exhausted. Some actually complained there was no time to relax and take a tour,” recalls Tang. In his hometown, business trips are for business alone, even dinner time is used to discuss business. “Now my colleagues in Huocheng are on board with my idea; they accept how a business trip is to be used.” Tang needed to persuade them not to view the trips merely as a perk, and he had to set an example.

Tang and his colleagues initiated the Huocheng Economic and Trade Seminar in Urumqi, attracting the participation of the official in charge of Xinjiang’s economy. As of this year, the county has landed more than 20 projects from secondary and tertiary industries, each with an investment of over RMB 10 million. Meanwhile because of stringent environmental protection standards, it has rejected many tenders. Now the biggest cooperative venture is with China Coal. Adopting state-of-the-art technologies from Shell and Siemens, the project is expected to contribute to the county treasury taxes and fees of RMB 400 million a year. “If big projects like this can be put into operation smoothly, an investment of over RMB 40 billion will be realized five years hence,” Tang says proudly.

Tang also assigned investment invitation targets to township officials. Townships are grassroot rural administrations, and Tang believes that their development must be strengthened. The township governments in Xinjiang hardly have any revenue and are largely dependent on the central government’s fiscal transfer system, a situation that has prohibited their development. “We assigned tasks to every township and offered an incentive – if they attracted an investment of a million yuan, they would get 30 percent of project’s generated revenue to use on improvements to their investment environment and locals’ living conditions. Of all the counties in Xinjiang, it’s Huocheng’s pioneering spirit that stands out,” Tang is distinctly pleased to say, and he believes the policy is in line with the spirit of the recent central work conference on Xinjiang’s development. Zhang Chunxian, Party secretary of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, once declared it was time to build a whole group of towns with distinctive characteristics in trade, manufacturing and tourism.

Tang’s ideas used to be questioned by local officials. But the last eight years have seen the gradual acceptance of the new ideas brought by this Jiangsu official; there’s nothing like experience to convince the locals that investment can bring job opportunities and fatten local coffers. As the official in charge of Huocheng’s economy, Tang invited experts to research and draw up a draft ten-year development plan to cover the decade from 2010 to 2020. The development direction and focus of the plan are very clear, so its continuity will be guaranteed no matter who is doing the job.

The legacy that Tang is most proud of from his term in office, is the sound foundation he has helped lay for the future development of Huocheng. In his eyes, the roots of economic stagnation lie in local lack of vision. Though Jiangsu Province has assisted Huocheng with over RMB 800 million in the last eight years, a new attitude and outlook is what will really provide the needed impetus.

Houcheng needn’t look far for a model; Erdos is seen as a good example to follow. This city in Inner Mongolia has surpassed Hong Kong in per capita GDP. “Every year Erdos sends one or two officials to Jiangyin to work. Its target was to catch up with the financial income of its teacher by 2010, which it realized last year.” Sharing similar weather and resources, the two cities of Erdos and Huocheng are mismatched only on the development ladder.

Jiangsu residents are traditionally Han people, so Tang was unaware of friction among ethnic groups until he came to multi-ethnic Xinjiang. Though the riot of July 5, 2009 was between different groups, Tang still believes he gets along with local officials “like brothers.” They usually make fun of each other, and even when jokes get out of hand, no one takes it seriously. Huocheng has different festivals celebrated by different ethnic groups, and it is customary for other groups to join a particular group and send congratulations on its festival. “I remember on the first fast-breaking festival after the riot, the whole county was a carnival ground. We officials set off at 11 am to visit families of different groups one after another. We ate, drank, and didn’t make it back until six pm. Tolerance to others is most important, I think.” Tang likes the environment of Huocheng, with one small exception: the custom of urging others to drink alcohol, he admits, is one he can’t stand.

As the date concluding his service here draws nearer, Tang confesses he has many regrets. “Given more time, the infrastructure would have seen much greater improvement. Given unity of thinking, more achievements could have been made.” Early this year, Tang planned to invest RMB 100 million to improve the infrastructure in Qingshuihe Economic and Technological Development Zone, but the plan miscarried just because local officials disliked the idea of getting into debt and disagreed about applying for a concomitant loan. The local mentality still needs time to shift to Tang’s perspective: “It’s external capital that will boost fast growth here. Exclusive dependence on one’s own funds renders it impossible.”

“Without courage and vision, there will not be a leap forward for Xinjiang,” Tang asserts. Xinjiang needs to research other provinces’ developmental strategies. He notes that not everyone will come to this region. “If my company is on the east coast, my market is not in Xinjiang, why would I invest here? We need to look at the question of fit, and look for investors that have a good reason to get involved here.” For example, Jiangsu Yulong Steel Pipe Company invested in a project of RMB 650 million in Huocheng that will produce 250,000 tons of oil and gas pipes annually. Its market is in Xinjiang and Central Asia, which makes commercial sense.

With a good supporting policy from the central government, Xinjiang will be able to improve its infrastructure and basic living conditions. However, it needs to count on itself to reach a level of wellbeing enjoyed by more developed regions. “Wellbeing is actually the last hurdle.”

Officials in Xinjiang generally face high working pressures on a low income. “We should learn from their industriousness.” Tang and other Jiangsu officials have solved many urgent problems for local people. Tap water pressure was insufficient to pump it to a second floor or higher, even in the county seat of government. Heating systems used to be another headache; residents usually enveloped themselves with quilts when watching TV. The third wave of Jiangsu officials decided to use RMB 20 million to improve the situation so that tap water flowed to every household, the heating period was prolonged and temperatures higher. “We’ve suggested that the next round of financial assistance should go to the contruction of dormitories for township officials. Many of them are so busy that they can’t go back home even during holidays and have to live in their offices,” says Tang.

Now Tang is making plans for inviting enterprises to invest in the construction of development zones. “If successful, it will give a great impetus to the further development of the county.” Officials here are experiencing the dynamism of free minds. Tang suggests more research to solve practical problems. “We plan to investigate projects with investment intent and hold a small-size investment seminar.”