7. Pursuing Coordinated Urban, Rural and Regional Development

In the process of accelerating modernization, Zhejiang is facing a salient problem—wide regional disparity. The people throughout the province cannot become well-off if the people in the underdeveloped areas do not become well-off; modernization cannot be achieved throughout the province if the underdeveloped areas are not modernized. The Zhejiang Provincial Party Committee and the Provincial Government have given overall considerations, attached importance to coordinated development and given top priority to the work regarding agriculture, rural areas, and farmers; they have taken narrowing the regional developmental gap and achieving a coordinated regional development as the core in overall coordinated development, they have actively pushed forward innovations in philosophy, policies, institutions and working methods. Attention has been paid to correctly weighing two tendencies, going beyond agriculture, rural areas and farmers to improve the work regarding agriculture, rural areas, and farmers; efforts have been made to develop agriculture, rural areas and farmers by taking actions in a coordinated way in urban and rural areas to promote a coordinated urban and rural development. An integrated urban and rural institutional framework has been preliminarily established; the whole province has entered a new stage of integrative development of urban and rural areas; Zhejiang has stayed ahead nationwide in the levels of agricultural modernization and coordinated urban and rural development; with the implementation of such projects as the Mountain-Sea Cooperation Project, the project with ten-billion in assistance and support for achieving prosperity and the project for turning the underdeveloped villages and towns into well-off ones, Zhejiang has embarked on a new path of coordinated regional development with Zhejiang’s characteristics which features help and support making the local people self-reliant, develop two-way interaction and win-win cooperation; Zhejiang Province is now at the forefront nationwide in coordinated regional development.