Border zones are at the forefront of opening-up and regional prosperity
VIETNAMESE and Chinese words are juxtaposed on signs and labels everywhere, as trucks lumber over the border in the Pingxiang Integrated Free Trade Zone in south China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.
Guangxi marked its 60th anniversary yesterday. In the past decade, it has reshaped its image from an economic backwater to a booming border trade hub.
Guangxi is among several border regions that are benefiting from China’s greater opening-up and the construction of the Belt and Road Initiative.
Before the start of reform in 1978, China’s border areas including Guangxi, Yunnan Province, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region had been some of the most backward.
“Economic development had always been a headache for China’s border areas due to harsh natural conditions such as rocky mountains, extreme cold, and desert,” said Dai Yonghong, a professor with the Collaborative Innovation Center at Sichuan University.
Daeng Gwzginz, 94, in Dawu Village, close to the region’s capital Nanning, remembers life 40 years ago.
“In the past, we only had corn or cassava as staple food,” Daeng said. “Rice was only for festivals.”
Guangxi’s GDP reached 2 trillion yuan (US$289 billion) in 2017, a world away from the 2.4 billion yuan in 1958, the year Guangxi became an autonomous region.
“China’s border areas embraced development opportunities when the Chinese government listed 14 cities including Manzhouli, Hekou, Pingxiang and Dongxing as open border cities in 1992,” Professor Dai said.
For example, Inner Mongolia, which celebrated its 70th anniversary last year, expanded its GDP to 1.86 trillion yuan in 2016, 642 times of that in 1947.
Over the past 14 years, the China-ASEAN Expo has helped expand trade.
With the expo, products from ASEAN countries such as coffee, durian products, jewelry, and jade are entering the Chinese market, and China’s manufacturing and infrastructure companies are entering ASEAN countries.
Statistics show that trade volume between China and ASEAN countries has increased from more than US$100 billion in 2004 to US$514.8 billion in 2017.
“In recent years the ChinaSouth Asia Expo, China-Eurasia Expo, and China-Northeast Asia Expo have also been held, creating important platforms for China’s border areas to further open up and develop their economies, laying a solid foundation for the Belt and Road Initiative,” said Zhai Kun, a professor of international relations at Peking University.
With the construction of road and railways between China and Vietnam, Laos, and Myanmar, a transportation network connecting China with south Asia has begun to take shape.
“Laotians will be able to take a high-speed train to China and Thailand in several years,” said Somsavat Lengsavad, former Deputy Prime Minister of Laos at this year’s China-ASEAN Expo.
“The Belt and Road Initiative is changing the geographic status of Laos and boosting infrastructure construction along the railway.”
Currently, a total of seven crossborder economic cooperation zones between China and Vietnam are under construction, said Jiang Liansheng, who is the chief of the regional commerce department of Guangxi.
Wang Yuzhu, executive dean of the China-ASEAN Research Institute of Guangxi University, said the increased investment from enterprises in Guangxi to countries along the Belt and Road routes would boost the economic development of these countries and create more jobs.
Professor Zhai added: “The Belt and Road Initiative emphasizes both land and maritime transportation, of which China’s border areas are a crucial part.
“China’s border areas are at the forefront of opening-up and will play an even bigger part in the future.”