Authorities in northeast China's Liaoning Province, one of the country's first major industrial bases, have redoubled efforts to tackle the bottlenecks facing the province's less developed counties and towns, so as to advance the integrated development of urban and rural areas.
The integrated urban and rural development is essential to Chinese modernization, according to the Resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Further Deepening Reform Comprehensively to Advance Chinese Modernization, which was issued on July 21 of this year.
To address the imbalance between urban and rural development, all localities including Liaoning have stepped up reform, introduced further measures, and made tailored plans for promoting rural revitalization and urbanization.
The new measures introduced by the Liaoning authorities include financial support for many small towns in Tieling City, such as Bamiancheng, which used to have difficulty in accessing funds in advance to procure coals for residential use in the winter months every year.
After learning about the lack of financial services at the grassroots level, Tieling municipal authorities dispatched a team of 96 officials and professionals from the city bank on a one-year mission to help these small counties and towns find the root causes.
"[It's only after I came to this town] that I got to know better about the problems facing the rural areas, including the people's actual needs. It was not what I expected when I worked at my bank in the city," said Liu Yanhui, vice president of Tieling Bank's branch in Changtu County where Bamiancheng Town is located.
With joint efforts, Bamiancheng and many other towns have successfully collected the funds used for coal procurement.
With the financial support in place, local authorities have gotten down to solve the inefficient use of land, which has long been another hindrance to the counties' development.
The sprawling economic development area in Taian County of Anshan City used to stand idle because of poor management, with the firms shuttered and factories devoid of activities.
A special work group has been set up to consult with company shareholders and creditors, aiming to redevelop and breathe new life into the 24-hectare area. Their efforts have seen investment slowly returning, with a tire company planning on building a production base here in recent days.
"We have worked to solve problems and promote development through reform and taken the counties as an important entry point for the integrated urban and rural development. By focusing on identifying and resolving each problem, we aim to cultivate and boost the leading industries to make the counties strong and the people rich, and guide the high-quality development of industry clusters featuring the distinctive characteristics and differentiation of each county," said Xia Cheng, deputy head of the Development and Reform Commission of Liaoning Province.
Liaoning makes tailored plans to tackle bottlenecks in county development
Liaoning makes tailored plans to tackle bottlenecks in county development
