The ambitions of Bijie, a mountainous city in Guizhou province, to realize economic and ecological prosperity will be accelerated under an eight-year development plan issued by the State Council this year, according to local authorities.

The State Council designated the city, once the poorest region in Guizhou, as an experimental zone for "development-oriented poverty alleviation and ecological construction" in 1988 under a proposal by Hu Jintao, then the province's Party chief.

Under the latest plan, a modern industrial system and transportation network will be built in the city by 2020 to push forward local development, according to a statement released by the provincial government in Guiyang on Monday.