LYCOS RETRIEVER 
China: Western China
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China's principal duty-free import/export zones are in Dalian, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Tianjin, and Hainan. Besides these official duty-free zones, numerous free trade and economic development zones and “open cities” offer similar privileges and benefits to foreign investors. In 2006, China ... actively promoted economic development outside its relatively wealthy coastal area by encouraging multinationals to establish regional headquarters and operations in Central, Western, and Northeast China. Some analysts speculate that China will eventually grant full trading and distribution rights nationwide.
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The west of China is comprised of mountains and deserts as well as plateaus that do not provide much arable land for agriculture. Throughout most of history, the civilization that grew up to the east in what is today China was not surrounded by other nearby major civilizations. To this extent the Chinese were "isolated" from competing civilizations although there was a broad and fluid frontier zone on the western margins. This geographical fact is important to remember when discussing the Western encroachment on China from the sea during the late imperial period.
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The stone tools and fossils of Homo erectus found in N and central China are the earliest discovered protohuman remains in NE Asia; some of the tools date to more than 1.3 million years ago. About 20,000 years ago, after the last glacial period, modern humans appeared in the Ordos desert region. The subsequent culture shows marked similarity to that of the higher civilizations of Mesopotamia, and some scholars argue a Western origin for Chinese civilization. However, since the 2d millennium BC a unique and fairly uniform culture has spread over almost all of China. The substantial linguistic and ethnological diversity of the south and the far west result from their having been infrequently under the control of central government.
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With the rise of Western economic and military power beginning in the mid-19th century, non-Chinese systems of social and political organization gained adherents in China. Some of these would-be reformers totally rejected China's cultural legacy, while others sought to combine the strengths of Chinese and Western cultures. In essence, the history of 20th century China is one of experimentation with new systems of social, political, and economic organization that would allow for the reintegration of the nation in the wake of dynastic collapse.
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Following the Chinese authorities' brutal suppression of demonstrators in June 1989, the United States and other governments enacted a number of measures to express their condemnation of China's blatant violation of the basic human rights of its citizens. The United States suspended high-level official exchanges with China and weapons exports from the United States to China. The United States ... imposed a number of economic sanctions. In the summer of 1990, at the G-7 Houston summit, Western nations called for renewed political and economic reforms in China, particularly in the field of human rights.
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By the 19th century, various Western powers had taken various pieces of China and trade was well established. The relationship... was fraught with difficulties. Westerners tended to see China as corrupt and decadent. Chinese often viewed the West as greedy and contemptible.
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Western China