China has announced it will continue to deepen collaboration and pairing assistance between its eastern and western regions, ensuring full coverage of the program to promote more balanced national development, officials said at a press conference on Thursday.
For three decades, China has implemented the pairing assistance program, which matches more affluent eastern provinces and municipalities with less-developed western regions, delivering financial, technical and human resource support to foster coordinated regional growth. Since its launch in 1996, this cross-regional partnership has played a vital role in the country's success in alleviating poverty and consolidating those achievements, according to Maierdan Mugaiti, Vice Minister of Agriculture and Rural Affairs.
The program has delivered substantial results in recent years. Between 2021 and 2025, enterprises were guided to invest over 750 billion yuan (approximately 110 billion U.S. dollars) in western regions, significantly boosting the development of local industrial clusters, the ministry reported. The investment has helped establish modern manufacturing bases, agricultural processing facilities, and logistics hubs in previously underdeveloped areas.
In addition to capital investment, the pairing assistance initiative has made notable contributions to employment. More than 5 million rural workers from western regions found employment opportunities through the program during the same period, with eastern partner provinces providing vocational training, job placement services, and labor mobility support.
Eastern regions have also ramped up their procurement of specialty agricultural products from western regions. Partner regions in the east purchased or assisted in the sales of agricultural products valued at nearly 570 billion yuan from western regions between 2021 and 2025. This has helped western farmers access larger markets and achieve higher incomes through improved supply chains and brand development.
Looking ahead, the Vice Minister stated that the ministry will maintain overall policy stability and sustained support for the program. Greater emphasis will be placed on leveraging the complementary strengths of different regions to foster shared development. The initiative will continue to provide strong backing for consolidating and expanding poverty alleviation achievements, advancing all-around rural revitalization, and promoting coordinated regional development.
The pairing assistance mechanism reflects China's broader strategy of achieving common prosperity through targeted, region-specific policies. By connecting the industrial capacity and financial resources of eastern provinces with the development potential of western regions, the program exemplifies how targeted government coordination can accelerate regional convergence and improve living standards across vast geographic areas.
As China continues its transition toward high-quality development, programs like the east-west pairing initiative are expected to evolve, incorporating new areas of cooperation such as digital economy partnerships, green energy collaboration, and technological innovation transfer between regions.
Sources: [gov.cn/SCIO]
