Even Xi Jinping is struggling to fix regional inequality

TO UNDERSTAND WHAT China’s leaders care about, look at where they travel. Earlier this month Li Qiang, the prime minister, spent three days in Xinjiang, a poor area in western China where he ordered local authorities to boost incomes and employment. At the same time Mr Li’s deputy, Ding Xuexiang, went to Shenyang, a city in China’s north-eastern rustbelt. Mr Ding called for the region’s “revitalisation”. Two weeks before all that, the supreme leader, Xi Jinping, presided over a symposium in the city of Chongqing where he heralded a “new chapter” in the development of China’s western region.