Ever wondered what it takes to run one of the country's largest, most barren and poorest provinces?

The answer is pragmatism, according to Qinghai Governor Song Xiuyan, who does just that.

Speaking at a press conference during the ongoing NPC session, China's only woman governor was frank about the province's position on the country's economic map: "Qinghai is Qinghai and Shanghai is Shanghai It doesn't make any sense to compare."

And she is clear about the cash-strapped province's priorities: Public welfare and ecology.

"That Qinghai's economy lags behind doesn't mean our efforts at improving public welfare can be slackened. Our people deserve to enjoy the fruit of the country's development, just as much as their fellow citizens in the rest of the nation," Song said.

Last year, Qinghai spent 20 billion yuan ($2.8 billion) - more than 70 percent of its annual fiscal revenue - on education, healthcare and poverty relief.

Making basic public services available to people in remote, sparsely populated Qinghai is more costly than in most other parts of the country, Song said.

For example, dorms have to be built for school students whose homes are hundreds of kilometers away, and hospitals have to equip themselves with thousands of ambulances to serve the herdsmen scattered across the vast plateau.

Nevertheless, by the end of last year, the Qinghai government had fulfilled all promises it had made to improve welfare for the local people, including introducing a subsistence allowance system for rural people and tuition subsidies for children from poor families.

In contrast to the generous spending on public welfare, Song works from an office in a shabby 1950s building in Xining, the provincial capital.