Staff Reporter
Want China Times
November 30, 2014
Li Keqiang, left, speaks about the Hu Line, as illustrated by the map on the wall, during his visit to the National Museum of China in Beijing, Nov. 27. (Photo/Xinhua)
The Chinese premier, Li Keqiang, said that after 80 years of development the Hu Line still applies to today’s China.
The Hu Line, also called Heihe-Tengchong Line or Aihui-Tengchong Line, is an imaginary line that cuts across China, linking Heihe in northern Heilongjiang province and Tengchong in the southern Yunnan province, marking significant population differences between the east and west of the country.
The phenomenon was identified in 1935 by Hu Huanyong, a geographer. At the time a majority of the Chinese population lived in the prosperous east, which is roughly 40% of the country’s total area, while only 4% were scattered over the 60% of more hostile terrain in the west.
The situation has not changed much over the last 80 years, Li said, examining a map on the wall during his visit to the National Museum of China in Beijing on Nov. 27.
Censuses over the last eight decades have seen very few changes to Hu’s findings. In recent years, several studies have even found the imaginary line applicable in the studies of various fields, including climate, agriculture, geomorphology, geology, culture and ethnicity.
To the east of the line the population is dense, with high-rise buildings, sound basic construction and strong GDP growth. To the west it is almost the exact opposite, with low population densities, vast grazing land with large amounts of livestock, and basic and industrial construction that depends largely on government subsidies. There is even scarce access to clean water in many of the more remote regions.
On Nov. 24, Li attended a forum organized by the Department of Rural Water Resources. During the event, Li was shown two buckets of water. One was full of muck and harmful materials yet is the water some of the people in rural area are used to drink every day. In the other bucket there was filtered clean water, accessible to some rural areas after a drinking water improvement plan was implemented. Li has vowed to make clean drinking water accessible to all rural residents in the near future, in addition to making efforts towards improving the western region’s overall economy.
