Ethnic minority lawmakers attending the current session of the National People's Congress (NPC) show overwhelming support for the central government's efforts to maintain stability and bolster economic and social development in areas inhabited by ethnic minority people.

These areas should seize opportunities arising from implementation of the develop-west-China strategy to further promote stability and development, said deputies from the Tibet Autonomous Region, southwest China, and the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, in the northwest.

Tibet and Xinjiang are responsible for opposing separatism, upholding the unity of the motherland, developing their local economies and safeguarding stability, according to the deputies.

Legqog, chairman of the regional government of Tibet, blamed the Dalai Clique and hostile forces in the West for their interference and disruptions which deprived Tibet of development opportunities in the 1950s and 1980s. Between 1987-89, riots and protests occurred in Lhasa, the regional capital, resulting in economic setbacks in Tibet and leaving the autonomous region even more backward than other parts of the country, he said.

Since the 1990s, Tibet has spared no efforts in achieving development and stability, fighting against separatism, and improving the living standard of Tibetans, making it the fastest developing period in the history of Tibet, with an average annual growth rate of 12.9 percent, higher than the national average, he said.

Raidi, an executive deputy secretary of Tibet Regional Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), attributed the region's fast economic development and social progress to social stability. The experience of Tibet shows that stability is the premise for development, he said.

Deputies from Xinjiang accused separatists, saying that the local ethnic minority people are aware of the evil nature of religious extremists and separatists and have opposed them of their own accord, which has curbed their separatist activities. Social stability has created a sound social environmental for economic development in the region, they said.

The issue of personnel has remained one of the biggest problems for the country's western region, but current social stability has attracted many professionals and funds to Xinjiang, injecting new vitality into the resource-abundant region, according to the deputies.

"Stability accords with the fundamental interests of the people," said Abdul'ahat Abdulrixit, chairman of the regional government of Xinjiang

According to the official, in the ninth five-year plan period (1996-2000), Xinjiang reached its goal of increasing its 1980 GDP by eight times, at an average annual growth rate of more than eight percent.

Xinjiang deputies pledged to narrow the economic gap between their region and other parts of China in the first ten years of the new century. It will develop itself into the country's biggest production base for cotton, yarn and cotton cloth and one of China's biggest producers of grain, livestock, fruits and sugar.