More From Our Geographers

Read more from our interview with Dr. Dru Gladney commenting on the importance of Northwestern China to both the United States and to China itself.

My advice to the U.S. government is to focus more on the importance of this region for the future development, not only of China, but Eurasia. . . . In an era of globalization, there is no area that is isolated. And this area is becoming increasingly central to the development of the rest of the region. Not only in energy and mineral resources, but also in terms of trade and transport.

I would caution the U.S. government against focusing too much on the politics within Beijing and on the Southeast coast -- Shanghai and Hong Kong -- and not paying attention to what has often been known as the heartland of Asia. It has often been regarded as the peripheral zone and an unimportant region in the past, and I think it's to our detriment to ignore the importance of this area. Look at what happens to a place like Afghanistan when it doesn't receive the proper amount of attention or support or economic development. Certainly for the future of China, it needs to pay attention to this area.

To the Chinese side, I have often suggested that the more creative solutions for development need to be examined, not just to look at urbanization and industrialization as the only solution, or pouring in money without looking at how it's spent and where it's distributed. The problem in China today is not so much not enough money, but the unequal distribution of wealth. And the southeast coast has grown a tremendous amount, and many parts of the northwest have stagnated, or not kept pace. These people have television sets. They see what Shanghai and Beijing is like. Their children are lagging behind in educational opportunities. And China needs to find ways to find opportunities for these populations. To take a harder look at what real autonomy means in this area, to maybe suggest models that are more creative, such as an Alaska type model where residents of a region [benefit] from their wealth, their mineral wealth or the oil wealth that's in the region.