Along with the progress of the country's go-west campaign, western regions continue to amaze visitors not only with their beauty in landscape and culture but also enormous opportunities for investors.
The campaign covers an area of 6.85 million square kilometers, or 71.4 percent of the country's total land territory, including Chongqing Municipality, Sichuan, Guizhou, Yunnan, Shaanxi, Gansu and Qinghai provinces, and the Tibet, Ningxia Hui, Xinjiang Uygur, Inner Mongolia and Guangxi Zhuang autonomous regions.
By the end of 2000, these 12 areas had a population of 355 million and a gross domestic product of 1,660 billion yuan (US$200 billion), accounting for 28.1 and 17.2 percent of the nation's total respectively.
The west is abundant in resources. About 80 percent of the total water resources, 70 percent of natural gas reserves and 60 percent of coal reserves are located there.
(China Daily February 20, 2002)
