The development of the western region and the remembrance of the third line construction (1)

OA show ('918 '); editor's note: May 8, 2000 is the first anniversary of the bombing of the Chinese embassy On this day, we received Mr Han Deqiang's "memory of the western development and the third line construction" Mr Han Deqiang said that the article "review and Reflection on the third tier construction" published in this journal had great enlightenment for him He is willing to make another kind of memory for the third line construction from the perspective of reality and economy, hoping that the readers can think more about the future security environment of our country I really didn't expect that the western development will become the key reporting object of news programs Last summer, when I heard from some of my predecessors that the Central Committee had decided to develop the west, I thought it was their wishful thinking It is true that the West should be developed, and indeed has the technical and economic strength to develop The problem is that the decision to develop the west is connected with the signing of the WTO bilateral agreement between China and the United States, which makes me feel inconceivable Because the development of the west is not a market behavior, but a planned behavior based on the long-term development of the nation, which takes the country as a whole The accession to the WTO is a thorough market behavior and a product of the impact of globalization The logic difference between these two behaviors is like fire and water How can they be adopted at the same time? With this question in mind, I watched the comments of academia and politicians from afar to find out Before and after the NPC and CPPCC, the western development has been hyped It is said that the price of the domain name of "western development" is up to tens of millions of yuan But after listening to the leader's speech and the authorities' comments and learning from the understanding of local politicians, I still feel that I have no idea After thinking about it, I summed up the following questions and asked for advice from everyone Why is the West backward? To develop the west, we must first understand the West If we do not understand the reasons for the backwardness of the west, we will not find the way to develop the West From the Neolithic age, some scholars have counted the relationship between the East and the west of each dynasty and found that the gap between the East and the West was not large until the Anshi rebellion of the Tang Dynasty From the Qin Dynasty to the early Tang Dynasty, the West even was the economic and political center of China In the western part of that time, the land was fertile, the water was beautiful, the vegetation was lush, the products were rich, and the population was large However, due to over exploitation, forest reduction, grassland degradation, land desertification, land capacity decline, disasters increase, gradually become ecological poverty and lose the status of economic center In the Qing Dynasty, "Huguang filled Sichuan" was carried out, which made Sichuan's economy prosperous for a time, and then the agricultural ecology deteriorated because of over exploitation From this simple review, we can generally have two impressions First, due to the fragile ecological balance in the west, there is a certain limit to the population and agricultural economic activities that can be carried out To develop beyond this limit will even cause irreversible poverty in the West Second, it is easy to overstep the ecological limit by fully using the market mechanism (such as "breeding people and never adding taxes", for example) to develop the western region, because people are chasing short-term economic benefits of individuals under the market mechanism, while lack of foresight and control over the long-term ecological consequences of groups After liberation, modern industry began to appear in China, and it began to explore the bearing limit of industrial economy in the West The third line construction in the 1960s has made great progress in the industry of the West The national defense high-tech industrial bases are all over the northwest and southwest provinces, powerfully driving the development of local industries, narrowing the industrial economic gap between the East and the west, while the agricultural economic gap remains the same Due to the low demand of national defense industry for resources and environment, we have not explored the limits of industrial economy in the West But in a number of coal, aluminum, iron and other resource development zones, we have also felt the serious environmental pollution caused by industrial resource economy, the most typical may be Liupanshui area If the high value-added industry is moved out of the West and the West becomes the main resource industrial area, it can be expected that the ecological capacity of the West for industry is also limited The west is the source of the Yangtze River and the Yellow River If serious industrial pollution occurs in the west, it will have a very adverse impact on the eastern economy Chongqing and small and medium-sized cities in the middle and upper reaches of the Yangtze River have seriously polluted the water quality of the Yangtze River If the resource-based high pollution industries in the west can be developed on a large scale, it is difficult to imagine how long the development of the west can last, or even how long the development of China can last Therefore, it is basically successful to develop technology intensive enterprises in the West in the 1960s and 1970s Since then, it has been 20 years since the reform and opening up In the blueprint of the chief designer, these 20 years should be the overall situation that the West obeys the development of the East, so it is a conscious behavior to open the gap between the West and the East In fact, I'm afraid it's both conscious and unconscious Because as long as we adopt market orientation and opening orientation, the eastern coastal areas will naturally become the center of industry and commerce Because the East has the advantages of maritime transportation and European North American transportation, the advantages of adjacent to Hong Kong, Macao, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Southeast Asia, and the business tradition, it is easy to become the center of the national economy If we add policy advantages, such as the establishment of special zones in the coastal areas, preferential policies for local taxes and the introduction of foreign investment in the coastal areas, the process will be more easily and greatly accelerated The result of market competition will form a center periphery pattern internationally, and a center periphery pattern will also be formed among domestic regions The center outputs high value-added products, while the periphery outputs resource products and primary processing products Since the early 1990s, some people in the West began to look at the problem of the early Qing Dynasty They believed that there was an unequal exchange between the West and the East The East exported manufactured goods at a high price to the west, while the West provided cheap energy and raw materials Due to the technological and capital advantages of the enterprises in the East, it is difficult for the west to compete with the East in the manufacturing industry This situation seems to be accelerating The so-called "peacock flies to the Southeast" is actually the loss of technology and human resources in the west, resulting in a vicious circle in which the East is more developed and the west is more backward That is to say, the market mechanism will open the gap between the East and the west, and the development of the East will inevitably take the backwardness of the West as the advance There is a so-called gradient development theory that the market economy will make the three parts of the East, the middle and the West echelon development, the first rich lead the second rich In fact, this theory is just the logical inference of market Romanticism (see the third part of my book "collision - the trap of globalization and China's real choice"), which has not been tested by practice It is an obvious fact that it is impossible for everyone to become a boss, and only a few of them can become a boss forever A rich boss does not lead workers to become rich; it is impossible for the whole country to become a city, and the prosperity of the city does not lead to the prosperity of the countryside Similarly, under the condition of market economy, it is impossible for every region to become an economic center Only a few regions can become a central region forever The development of the central region cannot drive the development of the marginal regions In fact, even in the East, wealth is far from close The per capita income of Shenzhen, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Beijing is far ahead in the whole eastern region, reaching the so-called moderately developed countries, while that of other large and medium-sized cities is not so good In Zhejiang Province, the income level of Hangjiahu Plain and xiaoshaoning plain is relatively high, while that of southern Zhejiang (except Wenzhou), Western Zhejiang and central Zhejiang is still in poverty This is because the economic center is exclusive, just as the boss's wealth is exclusive If the boss does not find a way to reduce wages and increase output, the wealth of the boss cannot be increased In the same way, if the eastern part does not use the competition of the western resource areas to lower the price of resources, and does not use the migrant workers from the western part to lower the price of labor, it is difficult for the eastern part to develop so fast Therefore, if the gradient development theory really has any practical significance, I'm afraid that it is a self consolation for the western regions that are actually migrant workers in the coastal areas However, unfortunately, in the hype of the western development, few people pointed out the fundamental defects of the theory of gradient development, and even continued to follow the theory that resulted in the backwardness of the western region It is said that if every Westerner who works in the East can earn 1200 yuan every year, then 10 million Westerners can accumulate 120 billion yuan at least This may be more than the central government transfers Therefore, encouraging the free flow of various resources is the only way to promote the development of the western region However, I don't know if this friend has considered that if a large number of Western laborers work in the East, the labor supply in the East will be excessive, and the price will inevitably drop, so it is likely that they will not earn the money to go home, let alone the net income Not only that, because the East can freely get the cheap labor in the west, the East has no power to transfer the production base to the west, which will further widen the gap between the East and the West When it comes to the reasons for the backwardness of the west, the gradient theorists are not willing to touch the inequality of economic exchanges between the East and the west, but attribute the backwardness to the backwardness of education and the low awareness of commodity economy In fact, with the achievements in the third tier construction, the education in the West has made great progress For example, Xi'an is the city with the largest number of colleges and universities in China; Mianyang, Deyang, Anshun, Zunyi in Guiyang, Panzhihua in Yunnan and other emerging industrial cities gather a large number of talents engaged in cutting-edge technology Although the level of compulsory education in the west is not as good as that in the East, the level of compulsory education does not determine the economic development of the region On the contrary, what we see is that a large number of high-quality talents in the west "Peacock Flies Southeast", which makes the education and talent flowers in the west be picked by the East and become the key element for the east to enter the virtuous circle It can be seen that the decline of population quality in the west is not so much the cause of economic backwardness as the result It can be seen from this that if we stress on increasing the investment in education in the West alone, the result may not be that we have developed the west, but that we have made clothes for others Some gradient theorists attribute the backwardness of the west to the lack of business enterprising spirit Business tradition is certainly a factor in the development of the eastern region However, after 20 years of practical education from commodity economy to market economy, people in the western region never lack the business enterprising spirit, but there is no opportunity for business growth (some of them are not excluded, for example, Changhong is in the western region), because the domestic market has been basically occupied by the eastern enterprises The eastern region not only enjoys the advantages of technology and resources brought by geographical location, but also enjoys the advantages of cheap labor force in the western region, and also occupies the advantages of industry entry barriers It is difficult for western enterprises to catch up with them The only advantage of the West may be resources, including labor resources However, the most surplus in the world is resources While developed countries monopolize the lifeblood of world industry by virtue of their technological and capital advantages, developing countries are competing to develop their own resources, which makes the price comparison between resource products and industrial products more and more unfavorable If the western region joins the vicious competition of global resource development, it can only further promote the decline of resource price, which is not conducive to the real development of the western region That is to say, when we discuss the backwardness of the West