Editorial by People’s Daily
Chinese President Xi Jinping urged east China’s Jiangsu province, an economic powerhouse, to play a major role in the country’s overall development.
Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, made the remarks when he taking part in a deliberation with his fellow lawmakers from Jiangsu during the third session of the 14th National People’s Congress, China’s national legislature.
He also highlighted the province’s responsibility to take the lead and achieve even greater success. His remarks provide significant guidance as China seeks to secure a decisive victory in the final year of the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025) and continues to open up new horizons in reform and development.
Over the past year, China has accomplished the main goals and tasks for economic and social development. Stable performance was consolidated and sustained, and strong and solid progress was achieved. The country’s economically developed provinces have played a pivotal role in anchoring this progress.
Amid a multitude of uncertainties and challenges, China still faces the challenging tasks of advancing reform and development while maintaining stability. Last year’s annual Central Economic Work Conference emphasized the need to support major economically developed provinces to play major roles, and encourage other regions to leverage their local conditions and advantages.
By calibrating each province’s comparative advantages within the broader Chinese national development framework, China is bound to fulfill the goals and tasks in the 14th Five-Year Plan with high quality and lay a solid foundation for a good start to the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030).
For instance, Guangdong, south China’s economic powerhouse, has played a pioneering and exemplary role in further deepening reform and opening up comprehensively. In 2024, the province’s foreign trade exceeded 9 trillion yuan ($1.24 trillion), an increase of 9.8 percent year on year, contributing to nearly 40 percent of China’s overall trade growth.
Jiangsu, anchoring itself as a major locality for developing new quality productive forces, has intensified the integration between technological innovation and industrial innovation. In 2024, 711 enterprises that use specialized and sophisticated technologies to produce novel and unique products were established in the province, the highest provincial tally in China.
Shandong strives to become an important economic growth pole in north China. Capitalizing on its maritime assets, it is creating a highland for the development of a modern marine economy, projecting its marine GDP to hit 1.8 trillion yuan in 2024.
Chinese economic powerhouses are cradles for fostering new business forms, new growth drivers, and new quality productive forces. They are also major engines for China’s economic development.
From innovation hubs to revitalized industrial belts, many provinces are carving out their specialized roles in the country’s modernization agenda by amplifying local strengths while aligning with broader national priorities.
For example, Hubei province in central China is accelerating efforts to build a strategic fulcrum for regional growth. Its breakthroughs – including cutting-edge memory chips, hollow-core fiber optics, and septal myectomy – are fueling its integration into China’s national innovation chain.
Liaoning province in northeast China is shoring up agricultural resilience while pushing industrial upgrades and service-sector expansion. As it enters the final year of its three-year action plan for comprehensive revitalization, it targets GDP growth above five percent.
Shaanxi, as the ancient Silk Road’s eastern gateway, is channeling its geographic legacy into modern logistics ambitions. The province is advancing a China-Europe freight train economic corridor designed to fuse transportation networks with cross-border trade and financial services, cementing its role in China’s unified national market.
This mosaic of localized strategies reflects a deliberate calculus: by leveraging comparative advantages – from technological prowess to geographic heritage – provinces are competing for strategic niches while avoiding homogenized development. The approach not only bolsters near-term goals like the 14th Five-Year Plan, but also lays groundwork for sustained, resilient growth.
China is advancing a series of interconnected regional strategies – including the coordinated regional development strategy, major regional strategies, the functional zoning strategy, and the new urbanization strategy – to foster localized economic modernization. Every province now falls under at least one of these national development strategies, ready to channel provincial strengths into a cohesive modernization drive.
These policies create favorable conditions, provide opportunities, and open up new space for different regions to explore high-quality development paths suited to their specific conditions.
Under the CPC Central Committee’s strategic planning and coordinated efforts, every region is covered by one or more national-level development strategies. By leveraging geographical advantages, resource endowments, industrial foundations, and scientific research capabilities, every region can maximize the opportunities presented by these national strategies, generating synergistic effects that drive Chinese modernization.
As global trade headwinds persist, China’s economic architects have demonstrated that decentralized innovation – guided by central coordination – could provide the necessary resilience.
