Good series of articles by Sidney Leng on two decades of policies aimed – and failing – to get China’s Western regions to catch up. If a country or region is poor because it lacks investment, then China’s western regions would long ago have caught up... https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3090273/can-xi-jinping-revive-chinas-dream-turning-its-poor-west?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=share_widget&utm_campaign=3090273

...with the east. But if it is poor because it lacks the set of political, legal, financial and cultural institutions that permit and encourage productive activity, then its ability to absorb additional investment productively is constrained by its weak institutions, in which...

...case additional investment beyond a certain level is mostly wasted – especially if, as some of my Chinese friends are complaining, institutional reform is moving backwards. I used to have this discussion all the time when I first moved to China, and it gradually...

...stopped as Chinese hopes for their “go West” program faded, but I suspect that with its renewed emphasis, these discussion will become common again.