Jul. 2 – China will soon build a 700 square kilometer coastal economic belt in the northeastern Liaoning Province specializing on shipbuilding, petroleum refining, advanced equipment manufacturing, raw materials, high-tech industries and agriculture processing, according to reports.

The province is located in the country’s northeast bordering the Bohai Gulf, North Korea, the Yellow Sea, Jilin Province, Hebei Province and Inner Mongolia. It is traditionally a major metal producer and is one of the top raw material production centers in the country.

Plans for the new zone will include the ports of Dalian, Jinzhou, Yingkou, Huludao and Dandong. “The zone will become an important engine for the rejuvenation of the the northeast industrial base,” said Lin Muxi, Economics School dean of Liaoning University told Xinhua.

“Since the Chinese government started to develop eastern coastal cities such as Shenzhen and Shanghai, the Pearl River delta and the Yangtze River delta have seen rapid growth,” he added. “Now the government is paying closer attention to the underdeveloped regions like Liaoning and Guangxi.”

There are also similar plans to invest in the coastal areas in Jiangsu, Guangxi and Fujian Province.  In June, an announcement was made that the Guanzhong-Tianshui Economic Zone Development Program will span Shaanxi and Gansu Provinces with an area of 79,800 square kilometers.

The new development plans is part of Beijing’s continuing campaign to bring the rest of the nation’s cities the same development experienced by the richer coastal provinces in the east and south. Since the reforms of the 1970′s, there has been an economic disparity between the wealth and development happening in the YRD and PRD regions while the rest of the second and third-tier cities lag behind.