In the past 20 days, China's northeastern region, including Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning provinces, has frequently appeared on the itinerary of President Xi Jinping's domestic visits.

Xi has just wrapped up a trip to the region, after attending Friday's opening ceremony of the 9th Asian Winter Games in Harbin, the provincial capital of Heilongjiang, and visiting Jilin's Changchun on Saturday, where he urged the province to play a bigger role in advancing Chinese modernization.

Days ahead of the Chinese New Year, which began on Jan 29, Xi, who is also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, made an inspection tour to Liaoning, where he visited flood-hit residents and stressed that Northeast China's full revitalization relies fundamentally on reform and opening-up.

The traditional industrial base, which was home to the country's first automobile, first jet aircraft and first 10,000-ton ship, led the nation's industrial development in the 1950s and 1960s, and, at its peak, accounted for 22 percent of the country's industrial output.

It gradually fell behind the country's eastern coastal regions in the face of economic challenges such as declining heavy industries and a shrinking population. In 2003, the CPC Central Committee adopted the Northeast China revitalization program as a major strategy for the country's overall development.

Xi, who has visited the region more than 10 times since 2012, once said he visited Northeast China quite frequently because he "was very concerned about the region's revitalization and development".

As 2025 marks the final year of the country's 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25), Xi's footsteps in the region in recent days reflected his concern for the region's future development and its full revitalization in the next five years and beyond, observers said.

After listening to the work report from provincial leaders on Saturday in Changchun, Xi reiterated that the comprehensive deepening of reform and opening-up is crucial for the full revitalization of Northeast China.

Stressing that Jilin must focus on high-quality development, Xi urged the province to unwaveringly take the real economy as the cornerstone and achieve coordinated development through transforming traditional industries, strengthening competitive industries and cultivating new quality productive forces.

Efforts should also be made to translate tech breakthroughs into real productivity, he said.

Related policies and regulations must be fully implemented in the process of deepening the reform of State-owned assets and enterprises and promoting the development of the private economy, Xi added.

He also stressed the importance of fostering a first-rate business environment that is market-oriented, law-based and internationalized, and building a higher-standard open economy.

Xi said that Jilin should prioritize the development of modern and large-scale agriculture, and achieve coordinated advances in applying technologies, promoting green development, improving quality and nurturing well-known brands in the sector.

He also encouraged Jilin to develop tourism by utilizing its distinctive resources, such as ice and snow, and better coordinate with other provinces for regional development.

Over the past decade, Xi presided over three key meetings on striving for the revitalization of Northeast China, and reform was at the top of the agenda of all of these meetings.

In 2015, Xi said at a meeting in Changchun that efforts to revive the former major heavy industry hub had reached a crucial stage, which was akin to pushing a rock up a hill while overcoming obstacles, and he urged the region to speed up reform and innovation in order to accelerate its revitalization.

Three years later, in 2018, Xi made a four-day fact-finding trip to Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning provinces and, at a symposium in Shenyang, called for efforts to deepen reform in order to revitalize Northeast China. The region has a strategic bearing on national defense, as well as on food, the eco-environment, energy and industrial security, he said.

As 2023 marked the 20th anniversary of the implementation of the Northeast China revitalization strategy, Xi emphasized at a meeting in Harbin the importance for the region to push for industrial innovation through scientific and technological innovation and accelerate the modernization of its distinctive industrial system.

With China's booming winter economy bringing more and more tourists to the northeastern region in recent years, the region's rich ice and snow resources have also become valuable assets for people to become prosperous.

As Xi said on Friday at a banquet in Harbin, ice and snow are as valuable as gold and silver. "The ice and snow culture and economy are becoming a new driving force for the high-quality development of Harbin, and a new bond linking the city and the world," he said.

Li Zheng, dean of the School of Economics of Liaoning University, said that for Northeast China, the vigorous development of the ice and snow economy can be considered a specific measure in building its distinctive industry system and cultivating new quality productive forces.

"The ice and snow economy, which also conforms with the current trends of consumption upgrading and industrial transformation, is expected to become a new driving force in the northeastern region's economic growth and serve as one of the key breakthroughs for the region's revitalization," Li said in an interview with Securities Daily.

Xinhua contributed to this story.

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