Abstract: The opening highland of the old revolutionary base area is a new paradigm of leapfrog development of inland economy in the new era, in which the inland areas can give full play to the late development potential and combine the comparative advantages of its natural endowments and the open mechanism innovation. By constructing a set of the evaluation index system for the opening highland potential and employing the entropy weight method, the findings of this paper show that the economic openness potential of the old Soviet area in Southern Jiangxi has no advantages in the border region of Jiangxi, Guangdong, Fujian and Hunan. At the same time, there is an obvious gap between it and the coastal developed areas, but the gap is narrowing. The study also shows that the old Soviet area in Southern Jiangxi is in a favorable late developing position in the evaluation of open highland potential. Therefore, to promote the construction of“dual circulation”cooperation platform, to vigorously cultivate export-oriented economy, to optimize the spatial opening pattern and to implement the open innovation-driven strategy will be conducive to the high-quality construction of the inland opening highland in the old Soviet area in Southern Jiangxi under the dual circulation.

Key words: the Old Soviet Area in Southern Jiangxi, dual circulation, the inland old revolutionary base area, opening highland