China's vast western region, which covers 12 provincial-level regions and accounts for 21.5 percent of the country's GDP, is vital to the country's overall development.

At a symposium held in Chongqing on Tuesday for promoting the development of the western region, the top leader said that the region plays an important role in China's reform, development and stability, and should improve its overall strength and sustainable development capacity and contribute to the country's modernization drive.

The western region has so far built nine national strategic emerging industrial clusters on new materials and biomedics and five national advanced manufacturing clusters on electronic information and aviation, with its industrial added value increasing from 5.8 trillion yuan ($800.5 billion) in 2019 to 8.1 trillion yuan in 2023.

The vast western region also boasts of many unique resource advantages, based on which it has accelerated the cultivation and development of a series of characteristic industries. Because of continuous efforts to optimize the distribution of major productive forces, and give full play to its comparative advantages, the western region has made greater strides in promoting high-quality development in recent years, with regional GDP growing from 20.5 trillion yuan in 2019 to 26.9 trillion yuan in 2023, at an average annual growth rate of 4.9 percent, ranking top among China's four major regions.

The western region is also an important channel connecting China with the outside world, and a number of major international channels have been built across the region, opening China's road of opening-up and development. Since the beginning of this year, the container cargo transported by freight trains on the new land-sea corridor via the western region has exceeded 200,000 twenty-foot equivalent units, a record high for the same period in earlier years.

The western region has actively integrated into the construction of the Belt and Road Initiative, and built a multi-level opening-up platform, breaking its past geographical disadvantage and forming a pattern of opening-up between land and sea and between the east and the west. In the past five years, a total of 35,000 China-Europe freight trains have been launched in the western region, accounting for 50.5 percent of the country's total, and the total import and export volume of the western region reached 3.7 trillion yuan in 2023, up 37 percent over 2019.

As more measures supporting the western region are to be rolled out, the region's development will take greater strides forward in the time ahead.

GUANGMING DAILY