A deputy to the ninth National People's Congress (NPC), China's top legislature, said Tuesday that China's western areas should avoid relying solely on preferential policies to attract overseas investors.
The western region should attach greater importance to creating a sound investment environment and fostering professionals, rather than solely relying on the adoption of preferential policies, said Peter M. K. Wong, a national lawmaker from the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR), at the plenary meeting of the NPC Standing Committee.
The government should no longer bear the financial load of issuing favorable policies, which are actually a kind of government subsidy for investors. The policies may lead to the waste of a huge amount of resources and underdeveloped areas would, at last, bear and suffer from the cost of the favorable policies, he said.
Wong, who began to invest in Dunhuang, in northwestern Gansu Province, in 1993, said that the efforts to attract investment should rely on the natural resources in the region as well as local governments' efforts to improve the investment environment and restructure enterprises.
He also proposed that government control over foreign financial institutions be relaxed to encourage overseas investment and financing.
Venture funds and non-profitable funds should also be introduced into western China to speed up the pace of training qualified personnel in the region, he noted.
(People's Daily 10/31/2000)
