Kunming takes the lead, central Yunnan leads the way, and Yunnan outlines a regional coordination roadmap for the “15th Five-Year Plan”

China News Service, Kunming, October 6 (Lu Xicheng) Recently, the Yunnan Provincial People's Government issued the "Fifteenth Five-Year Plan for Regional Coordinated Development of Yunnan Province" (hereinafter referred to as the "Plan"). Based on cross-regional channels and linkage with key cities, it strives to basically form a regional coordination and linkage pattern by 2030 in which "Kunming takes the lead, central Yunnan leads, regional coordination, corridor linkage, and all-area openness."

Yunnan is located in the southwest border of China, bordering Myanmar, Laos, and Vietnam. The border is more than 4,000 kilometers long. Each region has different resource endowments and different development foundations. The "Plan" proposes to promote "hard connectivity" of infrastructure and "soft coordination" of linkage mechanisms to further narrow the gap in per capita disposable income between urban and rural residents.

The "Plan" clarifies that Kunming should serve as the vanguard of the province's economic and social development, build a regional central city facing South and Southeast Asia, and strive to take the lead in basically realizing socialist modernization. In terms of industry, we will develop refined phosphorus chemicals, develop titanium chemicals throughout the chain, and build high-quality national advanced manufacturing clusters for rare and precious metals in Central Yunnan; in terms of opening up, we will promote the reconstruction and expansion of Changshui International Airport and build "the number one inbound consumption city in South Asia and Southeast Asia".

Central Yunnan covers 7 counties (cities) in the north of Kunming City, Qujing City, Yuxi City, Chuxiong Yi Autonomous Prefecture and Honghe Hani and Yi Autonomous Prefecture. It is the core area and power source of the province's economic and social development. The "Plan" proposes to build a Kunming metropolitan area with a one-hour commute, strengthen the provincial sub-central city of Qujing, cultivate three growth poles of Yuxi, Chuxiong and Honghe, and jointly build cross-regional advanced manufacturing clusters such as Songming-Malong and Anning-Lufeng.

The four large areas of western Yunnan, southern Yunnan, southeastern Yunnan, and northeastern Yunnan have developed in dislocation. Western Yunnan relies on scenery and water resources to build a clean energy base, and relies on ecological and ethnic cultural resources such as the Three Parallel Rivers and Gaoligong Mountain to create a world-renowned cultural tourism destination; southern Yunnan makes good use of tea-themed world cultural heritage to promote the development of the entire Pu'er tea and coffee industry chain; southeastern Yunnan strengthens the green aluminum and Panax notoginseng industries; Zhaotong takes advantage of its location advantage of connecting the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River and the Chengdu-Chongqing region to build a regional central city at the junction of Yunnan, Sichuan and Guizhou.

In terms of linkage between corridors and belts, the economic belt along the China-Laos railway will implement the Yuxi to Mohan section capacity improvement project to collaboratively improve the customs clearance capabilities of Mohan, Daluo, Menglian and other ports; the Chongqing-Kunming high-speed railway economic belt will strengthen linkage with Shuifu Port and Zhaotong Airport to explore the " "Chongqing-Kunming R&D + manufacturing along the line" model; the border economic belt will accelerate the construction of the border railway (Yunnan section), the G219 Yunnan section, the construction of Ruili, Hekou, and Mohan international port cities, and support the establishment of a comprehensive bonded zone in Ruili when conditions are met.

As of August 28 this year, 3,052 commercial vehicles were sent to Southeast Asia via the China-Laos Railway, an increase of approximately 6 times from 458 vehicles in the same period in 2025. The international transport of commercial vehicles on the China-Laos Railway has shown explosive growth.

The open channel extends in four directions: land, sea and air. Yunnan will speed up the completion and opening of the railway section from Baoshan to Ruili, promote the construction of Funing Port, Guanlei Port, and Jinghong Port, increase the number of routes from Kunming Changshui International Airport to the capitals and important economic cities of South and Southeast Asia, expand the capacity of cross-border land optical cables in the direction of China, Laos, and China, and deploy edge computing nodes in border states (cities).

The "Plan" also proposes to explore cross-regional industrial cooperation models such as "enclave economy" and "park within a park", promote education, medical care, and elderly care resources to be tilted toward border areas, old revolutionary areas, and rural areas, improve policies such as direct settlement of off-site medical treatment, transfer and continuation of social security relations, and increase provincial fiscal transfer payments to support underdeveloped areas, ecological functional zones, and border areas.