What else will Wanzhou have besides grilled fish?

(The author of this article is an associate professor at the Institute of Economics and Management, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, and a Ph.D. in agricultural economics)

The source of this article is the series planning of "My Hometown and Me", and for more "Big V Talk Hometown", please click here

Shu road is difficult. I remember that it was one day in September, departing from the wharf in the afternoon, taking the "Jiangyu" (or "Jianghan") passenger ferry, down the Yangtze River, after one night and one day, and arriving in Yichang in the afternoon of the next day. Then take 50 direct express rides from Yichang to the green skin, the whole journey takes 29 hours. When I arrived at the station in Beijing, it was late at night on the third day. That was in 1990, when I traveled to Beijing for the first time from Wanzhou District, Chongqing City, then Wanxian City, Sichuan Province. If you go home from Beijing and swim upstream from Yichang, it will take a little longer. Moreover, it was the most convenient option at the time. Although it became one of the earliest treaty ports in China in 1902, and was once known as "Chengdu-Chongqing-Wan" along with Chengdu and Chongqing, the road out of Sichuan was still not easy for the people of Wanzhou at that time. This state of affairs lasted until the end of the 90's. And then there is a constant acceleration. After 2003, Wanzhou's high-speed, airport, and railway were opened in turn. Today, it only takes 2 hours and 10 minutes to get to Beijing at the earliest. The time to travel to the main city of Chongqing has also changed from a night of bumps on the potholed and uneven highway to 1 hour and 16 minutes on the railroad tracks today. The trip to Chengdu has also changed from the tossing and turning of the Jianglun and the railway to today's 2 hours and 55 minutes.

In addition to the ease of access, Wanzhou itself has undergone tremendous changes in the past two to three decades. In addition to the grand background of China's economic take-off, there is another special reason for the great changes in Wanzhou, the Three Gorges Project. From Chongqing downward, the Yangtze River travels eastward, turning a thousand times through a large area of mountains until Yichang, where countless villages and towns are scattered on both sides of the 660-kilometer Sichuan River. Wanzhou is located at the midpoint of the two cities, as the largest city between the two places, the water level of the Three Gorges Project has been greatly affected, and most of the city has been submerged and rebuilt. Now, if you look at Wanzhou during the Three Gorges impoundment, under the calm water surface of the reservoir area, there is the old city that I and the previous generation used to be familiar with. On the surface of the water, looking at the old town of Jiangbei from the Jiangnan New Area, it is a large area of high-rise buildings that are intertwined with the old and the new; Looking at the south of the Yangtze River from the north of the river, it is another piece of high-rise buildings that are almost brand new, row upon row, and taller. It may really be a Pinghu New Town with a unique landscape among so many cities in China.

Although today's Wanzhou has become beautiful and prosperous, compared with the outside world, there may still be a lot of room for the development of Wanzhou. Wanzhou's per capita GDP of 75,800 in 2023 is not only below the national average of 89,400, but also below the average of 9.41 in Chongqing. From a structural point of view, the proportion of the primary, secondary and tertiary industries in Wanzhou in 2023 will be 10.2%, 32.5%, and 57.3% respectively, compared with the whole city of Chongqing, the proportion of the primary and tertiary industries is a little higher, while the proportion of the secondary industry is lower. Behind these scales and structures, fundamental economic geography should not be ignored. Despite the continuous improvement of transportation, Wanzhou is still a mountain city along the river, except for the urban area of Wanzhou, which is adjacent to the river, a considerable part of the rest stretches on both sides of the Yangtze River, and the rural population accounts for 58% of the registered population in the whole area. Moreover, compared with the dense urban agglomerations of the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta, there are no other larger cities near Wanzhou, and the main urban area of Chongqing, which is much larger than itself, is still nearly 300 highways. In other words, it is not a resource-heavy land, not relying on transportation arteries, and not close to a large market. The continuous pursuit of efficiency in the market economy determines that it is not easy to form a high degree of industrial agglomeration and form a large economic scale. Because of this, Wanzhou needs to work very hard to attract people and industries from outside. At the same time, the local young population is constantly facing the attraction of the larger world outside, especially the main urban areas of Chengdu and Chongqing.

What can Wanzhou do? More than a year ago, when I returned to Wanzhou, I was surprised to find that the people of Wanzhou had built the Tianshengcheng Cultural Tourism District almost on the side of a mountain, which was far more imposing than the Hongya Cave in the main city. Between the fragrant and colorful grilled fish, I can't help but admire the imagination and creativity of Wanzhou people. There's more to Wanzhou. Although the city itself does not have too many scenic spots, the surrounding Wanzhou Waterfall is also not far from the fame, but it is not important, the Three Gorges belong to it. My dozens of trips in and out of eastern Sichuan in the 90s, although long, but by no means boring, because of the Three Gorges. An ordinary fourth-class ticket carries the trip from Wanzhou along the river to Yunyang Zhangfei Temple two hours away, Fengjie White Emperor City an hour later, and then the next morning through Kuimen, into Qutang Gorge, to Wushan, into Wuxia, through Zigui and Xiangxi, out of Xiling Gorge. Looking at both sides of the river in the river breeze, regardless of winter or summer, what you see is the endless emerald green and majestic and dangerous show, and the ear is the endless sound of apes on both sides of the strait, which makes people nostalgic for the past and the present, and forget everything. Although the landscape has changed, today's cruise travelers should still be able to experience all of this, if not better. It is only by boat that they may realize that there is no more comfortable and comfortable way to travel in the world. It's a bit of a pity that although the Yangtze River cruise ships in Wanzhou Port are often seen, and it is sometimes difficult to find a ticket in summer, the Three Gorges tourism does not seem to have really gone out of the circle in recent years. Perhaps with the full opening of the high-speed railway along the Yangtze River, more Chinese people can really discover the Three Gorges, and it will also bring more opportunities to Wanzhou in various industries.

What else can Wanzhou do? As an economist who is not on the front line, he does not dare to prescribe any panacea out of thin air. All kinds of creative ideas, opportunities and achievements must be discovered and realized by the local rulers, entrepreneurs, and more than 1.5 million hard-working Wanzhou people in Chongqing and Wanzhou District, who are working the front line. And as wanderers like us who are far from home, we are also full of expectations. At a time when China's economy is shifting from sprint to high-quality development, measures and efforts that seem not so direct but actually determine the long-term are becoming more important beyond a specific project. The first is the system and environment. Doing a good job from the superficial municipal operation and management to the invisible business system and environment is very important for a mainland urban area like Wanzhou, and of course it is more challenging. In order to attract more investment and talents from outside the region, this is something that has to be done well. Secondly, in fact, first of all, the most anticipated is education. Whether it is the theory of economics, or countless positive and negative cases at home and abroad, it is shown that the success of any country and region is inseparable from the role of good education and population, especially for a mainland urban area like Wanzhou. On the one hand, Wanzhou may need to vigorously promote local higher education. On the other hand, it is also very necessary to achieve the popularization of high-quality high school education and continuously improve the lower limit of the quality of the population. This is one of the most effective measures for Wanzhou to achieve industrial upgrading, fight population outflow and aging, and cope with the coming era of artificial intelligence. The impact of universal education is 100 years, and the results are not far away, just a few years. I hope that in the future, in addition to grilled fish, Wanzhou will have more and better business cards in China and even the world.

The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author.