China’s East-West Economic Gap Refuses to Narrow

By Cheng Siwei and Denise Jia

Gift this article

Subscribe to gift this article

Gift your friends free access to this article

SUBSCRIBE NOW

Already a subscriber ? Sign In

Send any friend a story

00:00

00:00/00:00

Listen to this article 1x

Western China’s Gansu province had the lowest GDP per capita in 2022 at 45,000 yuan ($6,206), less than a quarter that of Beijing, which had the highest.

Despite a push for more balanced development, the economic gap between China’s better-off eastern coastal regions and its less-developed western inland regions remains wide, according to the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC).

The western region, including 12 provinces and autonomous regions, accounted for 21.4% of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 2022, up from 19.6% in 2012, NDRC Vice Chairman Zhao Chenxin reported to the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress. The ratio of GDP per capital in the eastern regions to that in the western regions declined to 1.64 in 2022 from 1.87 in 2012.