While the world is looking to the East, China is looking to the West, but, the “west”, in this case, isn’t western countries, but western China.

On March 5, at the opening ceremony of the 11th National People’s Congress session, Premier Wen Jiabao, in explaining the main goals of 2012, said that reforms and further opening up were the right choices for China's future.

“We must respect people's creativity and explore new ways, and continue with all the reforms, including the economic and political systems, with greater resolve and courage. And [we need to] deal with complex development issues in keeping with the Scientific Outlook on Development”, Wen announced.

This immediately reminded me of what he had said at the 10th Western China International Fair and the Second Western China International Cooperation Forum, in Chengdu, Sichuan province, three years ago.

At that time, he remarked that, “The Chinese government will not lose its resolve or change its policy or reduce its effort to implement the western development strategy. That’s because the level of development of that region will determine the level of China’s modernization overall, and the level of opening-up will determine the depth and breadth of the opening-up of the entire country.”

At the beginning of this year, the State Council gave its official view on the 12th Five-Year Plan for Large-scale Development of the West and proposed that Chengdu be turned into a strategic site for an open economy inland.

In response to that, Chengdu established five urban development strategies, based on a scientific understanding of both national and global urbanization trends, and an active approach to the challenges of regional competition: “Transportation first”, “Industrial multiplicity”, “Building new towns and making optimal use of old ones”, “Integrating three circles”, and “Fuller opening”.

The city is now working on setting itself up as a growth pole for the western economy, with its own advantages globally, and in China, and in the western region. Over the next 5-10 years, the city intends to deal with some complex issues in China’s development, such as: correcting the development imbalance between coastal parts in the east, and those in the central and western parts; make better use of the tendency of people and production to converge on regional; and make Chengdu a core western economic area with greater concentration and greater driving force.

John Naisbitt, a prominent American author and researcher in future studies, has some great expectations for Chengdu and has predicted that it is coping with the challenges in an efficient way.

“When walking the streets of Chengdu, or visiting in the countryside, or chatting with farmers and workers who used to be members of vulnerable groups, I cannot help but be full of confidence in Chengdu’s future”，Naisbitt said.

And, he’s right. We also cannot deny our confidence in Chengdu’s future.

It is a part of China’s expectations because a rich, green, strong western region will make for a richer, greener, stronger China. We believe the both western China and the whole country will benefit from Chengdu’s attempts to become a core area of western growth.