BEIJING — The Chinese central government allocated an accumulative investment of 1.63 trillion yuan (about $253 billion) in the 70 years after the peaceful liberation of Tibet, said Wu Yingjie, Communist Party of China chief of Tibet.

The southwestern autonomous region also received a total of 69.3 billion yuan of funds from other provincial and municipal governments in recent years, Wu said at a press conference on the economic and social development of Tibet on  May 22.

Over 590 billion yuan of the total investment were put into the construction of a spate of major projects that have greatly driven the region's economic development, including the Sichuan-Tibet Highway and Qinghai-Tibet Railway.

During the 13th Five-year plan period (2016-2020), the central government planned an investment of 380.7 billion yuan for Tibet, but the actual amount put into place reached 393.7 billion yuan, said Qizhala, chairman of the regional government.

The massive investment is directly linked with the improvement of infrastructure construction and people's livelihoods in Tibet, Qizhala said.

For the next five years, he said, investment poured into Tibet will grow with a fairly large margin from the previous period, with focus on ecological development, people's wellbeing, social governance and construction of the border areas.