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Chen Zongxing, Vice Chairman of the Standing Committee of the Chinese Peasants and Workers Democratic Party, agrees with Zhou.
After years of study, Chen found that the main reason for the poverty in those old revolutionary base areas is their remote location and poor infrastructure.
"For instance, in Fujian Province, 1,000 villages of the old revolutionary base areas don't have access to highways and over 1,200 villages don't have safe drinking water," said Chen.
The infrastructure conditions are so bad that it's hard for those areas to attract investment. Worse still, they don't have leading industries, said Chen.
To address this problem, the promotion plan has attached great importance to transportation construction in the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia base area. By combining water resources usage, ecological construction and environmental protection, the plan lists key development points for the area from 2012 to 2020, involving over 120 key construction projects in 11 categories.
The promotion plan for the central Soviet area, which is now being formulated, takes mineral resources in the area, such as tungsten and rare earth, and special farm produce, such as oranges, as footholds for its future development.
The plan has a conspicuous purpose. The development of old revolutionary base areas used to be pushed forward by a fiscal transfer payment system. But this method can't be sustainable. In the future, old revolutionary base areas should rely on their characteristic resources to realize sustainable development. Only in this way can they catch up with the pace of industrialization in China, said Zhou.
China has long been searching for ways to develop those areas.
During this year's session of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), Zhang Hongwu, a CPPCC member and Director of the Yellow River Research Center at Tsinghua University, submitted a proposal on how to develop characteristic industries in old revolutionary base areas.
These areas have a late start and there are contradictions between economic development and ecological environment protection, said Zhang. "But they have their distinguished industries. How to put this advantage into best use is a realistic subject that needs urgent study."
We should formulate strategic plans for developing distinctive industries in those areas. By fully utilizing local advantages, the government should support companies that can both offer job opportunities to rural surplus laborers and improve the ecological environment. The government should intensify support for anti-poverty campaigns and industrialization projects, said Zhang.
"What's more, since old revolutionary base areas are mostly memorial sites for the Chinese revolutionary history, they can serve as patriotic education bases and team up in efforts to develop local tourism," said Zhang.
In the eyes of Chen, the most urgent task is to make a thorough investigation on old revolutionary base areas nationwide and then make a national and systematic plan for propelling their development.
"For people living in extremely severe environments in those areas, the government should improve their living conditions by relocation. At the same time, relics of the Chinese revolution should be restored and properly protected," said Chen.
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