Vice-Premier Huang Ju has urged Guizhou Province, southwest China, to accelerate its development by seizing opportunities of the national strategy to support the under developed western regions.

Huang, also a member of the Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee Political Bureau, advised local officials to learn from experience, improve policies and innovate boldly to find new ways of development in the western region.

Huang completed a four-day study tour of the province on Jan. 4, in the company of provincial Party chief Qian Yunlu and Governor Shi Xiushi. He visited enterprises and the historic site of the Zunyi Conference, at which Mao Zedong took over as head of the CPC-led armed forces in 1935.

Huang said Guizhou should make use of its rich natural resources and further open up to the other parts of the country and the rest of the world. He urged local officials to further economic reforms, and to focus more on employment, social security and poverty relief.

He called for efforts to ensure a joyful, peaceful and stable Spring Festival, the traditional Chinese Lunar New Year, which falls on Jan. 22 this year.

(People’s Daily January 5, 2004)