Gritty Chongqing hopes to shine under new leader

By Lindsay Beck

CHONGQING, China (Reuters) - China's western metropolis of Chongqing is typically described as gritty and industrial. Its new Communist Party boss, Bo Xilai, is known as worldly and sophisticated.

So Bo, 58, who took the helm of the region late last year, will have his work cut out for him in order to reinvent Chongqing on his terms.

The Yangtze river region of 30 million lies some 1,500 km (620 miles) from China's booming coast. Although it has been a focus of central government efforts to develop the west, it remains hindered by both geography and a legacy of unproductive state-owned enterprises.

"Chongqing residents are putting a lot of hope in Bo Xilai. People feel the city has a new opportunity," said Xiao Zhou, 32, who works for a cosmetics company in the heart of the city.

"They want to see Chongqing become as developed and as beautiful as Dalian is," he said.

Dalian is the northeastern port city where Bo made his name as mayor in the early 1990s, turning it into a rare economic success in a part of China better known as a graveyard of failed state industry.

But the son of late vice premier and Long March veteran Bo Yibo faces a tougher beast in Chongqing.

Where Dalian's geography made it a natural target for foreign investment from Japan and Korea, Chongqing is hampered by its location far up the Yangtze at the edge of the Three Gorges dam reservoir, and by the poverty and inaccessibility of its rural counties.

"You just have to look at a map," said one foreign business executive whose company is planning investments there.

"If you need something and it's not in the Sichuan basin, it's a pain," said the executive, adding that shipping by barge up the Yangtze from Shanghai was time-consuming and expensive.

STIRRING IT UP

The mountains and gorges within the region have left some areas cut off entirely from development and that means it can take up to two days to travel from one end to the other.

But the region is not without advantages.

It is home to huge gas reserves, which make it a natural place for the development of the chemical industry, and it stands to benefit if China goes ahead with plans to build a gas pipeline from nearby Myanmar through its western provinces.

Though cut off from the coast, Chongqing and its neighbor Sichuan comprise a market of more than 100 million.