\nThe government’s all about recalibrating the economy and spreading the wealth at this year’s NPC. Again. That means more spending on schooling country kids and expanding health care benefits; fewer scummy, wasteful mills and power plants; and populist new laws to even out taxes for foreign and domestic companies, the legal status of public and private property, and the rights of workers. So we read reams of reports about what China’s lawmakers are going to give — but precious little about what they’re out to get.\n<\/p>\n
\nAs the story describes it, the four provinces are vying for official approvals, preferential status or other forms of political support for their trophy projects. The contingent from Hubei tell Caijing they envision creating a new zone around Wuhan in the image of Tianjin’s experimental Binhai – it’s time for the experiment to spread, a Hubei vice-statistics chief argues on his NPC blog – but they admit that their planners aren’t as far along as counterparts from neighboring Hunan. Hunan delegates, meanwhile, reveal that the province’s party secretary and governor visited with top State Development Planning Commission officials on the eve of the congress to request help in polishing off their plans for a zone integrating Changsha and two smaller economic hubs. Down from Liaoning for the congress, Shenyang mayor is campaigning to put the new Shenxi Industrial Corridor<\/a> on a par administratively with Shenzhen and Shanghai’s Pudong; the province’s star Party boss Li Keqiang says Liaoning is making use of abandoned plots and mud flats but “did not elaborate” on the project’s reported environmental problems, says Caijing. And back where Li Keqiang was last posted, Henan, officials are out to show they’re heeding Beijing’s warnings against wayward urban sprawl, vice-governor Zhang Weimin tells Caijing. Premier Wen’s government reprimanded top officials there in September<\/a> for expropriating land to build Zhengzhou’s Longzihu University Town minus approvals. Zhang says the province is guiding its cities to save space.\n<\/p>\n