Sichuan province has made great strides in its all-round development over the last decade, according to leading officials at a news conference on the province's achievements over the past 10 years held in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province, on Thursday.
Sichuan has steadily moved from an economically large province to an economically strong province, with its gross domestic product more than doubled from 2.39 trillion yuan ($352 billion) in 2012 to 5.38 trillion yuan in 2021, said Wang Xiaohui, secretary of the Sichuan Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China.
Last year, the number of Sichuan's high-tech enterprises exceeded 10,000, which was 7.4 times the number in 2012. The main business income of high-tech industries reached 2.3 trillion yuan, 2.8 times the number in 2012. The contribution of science and technology to economic growth has increased significantly, Wang said.
Sichuan has tried its utmost to win the battle against poverty. Its 11,501 impoverished villages and 88 poor counties have all recovered from poverty. In the past 10 years, more than 65 percent of the provincial finance's expenditure has found its way to improving people's livelihood, and the average life expectancy of Sichuan people increased from 75.2 years in 2012 to 77.9 years in 2021, he said.
Sichuan has attached great importance to the revitalization and development of the old revolutionary areas in the province and those with large ethnic minority populations, according to Sichuan governor Huang Qiang.
The Dadu River Bridge of the Ya'an-Kangding Expressway in Luding County, known as the first bridge between Sichuan and the Tibet autonomous region, was completed in 2018.
The bridge has opened up a major link from the inner region into Tibet's inhabited areas, Huang said.
Sichuan is an important ecological barrier in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River and Yellow River. Its forest coverage rate has exceeded 40 percent, an increase of 5 percent compared to 10 years ago, the quality of its water environment has hit the best level in 10 years, and the air quality has continued to improve, he said.
Sichuan's green and low-carbon development advantages have been more obvious in the past decade, the governor said.
Sichuan is the largest clean energy base in China. The Baihetan Hydropower Station, which is the second-largest hydropower project in the world, has an installed capacity of 16 million kilowatts.
In the past decade, Sichuan's power transmission to eastern parts of China is equivalent to the annual power generation capacity of 11 of the Three Gorges hydropower stations, Huang said.
