A sense of deja vu comes over me when I read the Chinese government's proposals for the development of China's western, or hinterland, provinces.
These regions have fallen behind, both economically and politically, as the coastal provinces power ahead on the capitalist engine started up in 1978 by Deng Xiaoping. Deng's drive for reform and opening up triggered the movement of people and money to the areas best placed to respond to market opportunities, i.e., the coastal provinces, especially those in the south with good connections to Hong Kong and Taiwan. The interior regions became relatively and, in many cases absolutely, worse off as productivity fell. Only the old state-owned enterprises, which had been moved to the hinterland in the Cold War era, stayed on. Subsidies to agriculture kept those provinces' economies afloat.
Now that the SOEs are being reformed and agricultural protection reduced, the growing numbers of workers who have been made redundant and farmers who have lost their incomes have become a potent source of discontent.