The State Development and Reform Commission invited experts and scholars from the State Council Development Research Centre, China Academy of Social Sciences and State Macro Economy Research Institute to a seminar on 28 April on the transfer of industries from the coast to the interior.

Representatives from these influential national think-tanks discussed the importance and challenges of such large-scale industrial transfer and measures that the government should take to facilitate the transfer. The seminar concluded that a planned industrial transfer would further open up the interior and also give space for the coastal region to upgrade its industries and improve its competitiveness, thereby rationalising the country’s industrial landscape.

Foreign trade in the interior region in the first quarter declined by 20.8 per cent year-on-year in the first quarter of 2009 to US$17.4bn, 4.1 percentage points worse than the national average. Out of this total, exports slid by 16.2 per cent to US$10.3bn while imports declined 26.6 per cent to US$7.1bn.
The downturn was due primarily to the extremely low prices being fetched for primary products in world markets. Some companies exporting raw materials have either suspended production or completely shut down. Gansu province, for example, a major exporter of raw materials, recorded a decrease of nearly 52 per cent in foreign trade, the country’s biggest decline in the first quarter.

However, the interior region recorded a 46.2 per cent increase in fixed assets investment in the first quarter to Rmb504bn, 18.1 percentage points higher than the national average, largely due to the central government’s stimulus package that favours the interior.