This week Xinjiang saw the founding of the “Frontier Nationalities Orchestra,” the groundbreaking of Xinjiang’s largest inland fishing port, an education seminar and a writing seminar in Urumqi, a crackdown on poaching, the topographical conquest of the “Sea of Death,” and more, under the break.
Xinhua Network News Xinjiang Channel 新华网新疆频道
- 2 December 2007: A group of experts from the National Forestry Bureau recently finished a survey in the Gurbantunggut Desert and found that the local sacsaoul forests now cover 15 million mu, enough to bring about a significant decrease in climate warming in the area. The growing forest has been directly attributed to the efforts of the 8th Agricultural Division of the XPCC, which plants over 300,000 mu of forest a year and sows over 500,000 mu worth of seeds via airborne distribution. The continuing growth of vegetation in the Gurbantunggut Desert is believed to have also brought about greater precipitation and fewer sandstorms, which in turn has aided in very high cotton outputs from farms administered by the same XPCC units.
- 2 December 2007: A second group of over 1000 demobilized soldiers were ceremoniously seen off at Urumqi’s train station on the 1st, bound towards their original homelands in Eastern China.
- 2 December 2007: Now that the harvesting season is over, agricultural migrant workers are also returning via train to their homelands in China proper. The last official batch of workers arrived in Henan from Kuitun on the 30th of November. They were the last 2422 of a total of 290,000 migrant workers from other provinces who came to Xinjiang to work seasonally on farms and orchards.
- 3 December 2007: The Malaysia consulate in China, the Malaysia Foreign Trade Promotion Center, the Malaysia Halal Goods Exhibition Committee, and the XUAR Foreign Trade office held a seminar on halal goods business opportunities in Urumqi on 26 November. The goal of the seminar was to strengthen the foreign trade relationship between Malaysia, which has an established halal goods industrial base, and Xinjiang, which has a high-demand for quality halal goods.
- 3 December 2007: From January to October of this year, the total output of Xinjiang’s mechanical and electrical industry totaled over 8.5 billion yuan, ranking first in the country.
- 3 December 2007: Th XPCC has established the “Frontier Nationalities Orchestra,” Xinjiang’s first ethnically themed orchestra. The orchestra has over 70 members, most of whom are already members of other troupes in the XPCC Cultural Union, such as the XPCC Song and Dance Troupe, the XPCC Acrobatics Troupe, the XPCC Qin Opera Group, the Urumqi Qin Opera Group, and the Xinjiang Erhu Association. The creation of the Frontier Nationalities Orchestra was lauded by the Cultural Union secretary Qin Anjiang as a way to return to traditional styles of music which have been neglected in the recent years.
- 3 December 2007: Construction of the northwest’s first inland fishing port began at the end of November. The construction site is located on the shores of Bosten lake in Bayingholin Prefecture. Bosten Lake is Xinjiang’s largest fishing industry base, producing over 6000 tons of aquatic products annually, but because of the lack of a complete and dedicated port, the anchorage and unloading of fishing boats has always been scattered, haphazard, and inefficient. Once completed, the Bosten Fishing Port will be able to simultaneously dock 150 fishing vessels.
- 3 December 2007: Starting from the end of December, the pollution emission levels of 55 centralized heating companies in Urumqi will be monitored by local Environmental Protection Bureaus 24 hours a day through the use of electronic monitoring systems. The monitoring systems have already been installed at the company installations and are scheduled to pass inspection on the 20th of December. One monitoring begins, should any particular company surpass emission standards, officers of the EPB will immediately be dispatched to rectify the situation. The constant monitoring of emissions is expected to create a significant, positive impact on the pollution situation in Urumqi.
- 4 December 2007: Just as Urumqi’s winter reaches full swing, China Southern Airlines has opened its Urumq – Taiyuan – Haikou route, offering embattled Urumchiliks with enough money a way to fly to China’s tropical getaway.
- 4 December 2007: The XUAR Propaganda Bureau and the Xinjiang Writer’s Association held the Regional Novel and Documentary Literature Seminar on the 1st of December. Over 100 writers of all nationalities attended to talk about literary works produced in Xinjiang over the past few years, to share ideas, and to discuss how to further enrich Xinjiang’s nationalities and socialist literature for the future. The article states that over the past 10 years, Xinjiang’s naturally abundant ethnic resources and talented writers have created great strides in both Han literature in Mandarin and minority literature in minority languages, so much so that a number of Xinjiang writers have joined the forefront of modern Chinese literature.
- 4 December 2007: The first Xinjiang Teachers Education Development Forum was held at Xinjiang Normal University, gathering a large number of education intellectuals from all over Xinjiang and greater China to discuss ways in which the principles and spirit of the 17th People’s Congress could be implemented in regional education systems.
- 4 December 2007: Urumqi continues to face uncomfortably high levels of pollution. After the city environmental protection bureau issued its first level blue pollution warning in the 28th, Urumqi saw an additional four days of level 3 pollution from the 29th of November to the 2nd of December. On the 3rd, the pollution level dropped to level 2, a positive development, but still high enough to bother the respiratory systems of Urumqi residents.
- 5 December 2007: By the end of 2008, all grassroots level work units will have revised and improved their emergency response systems, according to information attained at the recently held Regional Grassroots-Level Emergency Management Conference. Efforts to improve emergency response systems include the creation of one or two full time emergency response teams for every city and county, and an additional emergency response team for townships meeting certain risk conditions, streamlined communication and reaction protocols between all levels of the emergency response bureaucracy, and systematic grassroots education to include beneficial public participation in the event of an emergency.
- 5 December 2007: Of the college student volunteers who participate in the “Serving the West” program, 90% ultimately decide to join the CCP after their volunteer period is over. The “Serving the West” program is a part of the larger “Develop the West” plan which involves sending student volunteers from China proper into Xinjiang to do “service work.” According to the article, most of the students, because of the work, become involved with intimate, daily contact with minority communities and get to witness firsthand the rapid economic and social development brought about by the party leadership, thus themselves becoming ardent followers of the party line. Since the “Serving the West” program began in 2003, 3892 student volunteers have done work in Xinjiang. Interestingly, 700 of those volunteers, or 18%, have decided to stay in Xinjiang after their service period is over.
- 5 December 2007: A 120 million yuan fund has been established to help low-income middle school and college students pursue their education. The money will be use to set up scholarships and financial aid programs which in turn will be distributed to low-income students across Xinjiang.
- 5 December 2007: The Regional Education Department has announced that there are currently 150 thousand students in the bilingual education system. The bilingual education program first began as a small number of experimental schools in the 80s and 90s, expanding greatly after the national government invested 130 million yuan in 2003 to train minority teachers in bilingual teaching methods; currently 18 thousand minority teachers have gone through this training regimen and are now teaching using bilingual methods. The bilingual syllabus is characterized by hard sciences such as math, physics, and chemistry being taught in Mandarin Chinese, with the rest of the subjects being taught in the local language.
- 5 December 2007: After receiving a report of illegal poaching on the 24th of November, officers of the Tacheng District Forestry Police Branch carried out a full-blown investigation, including the shadowing of a number of suspects, that culminated in the pulling-over of a large van in Hebukusaier Mongol Autonomous County (see in Google Earth) stuffed with ten Goitered Gazelle corpses. The Goitered Gazelle is classified as a level two protected wildlife and the arrest of the poachers is considered a breakthrough in conservation in Xinjiang.
- 6 December 2007: A elite team of handpicked security industry professionals gave an excellent performance at the first ever “National Security Industry Abilities Competition, which was hosted by Ministry of Public Security, Ministry of Labor and Social Security, the All-China Federation of Labor Unions, and the Central Communist Youth League from the 27th to the 30th of November in Chengdu. Competing against 30 thousand competitors from all 31 of China’s districts, the Xinjiang team managed to land 6th place overall and individual team members garnered over 20 special awards.
- 6 December 2007: A reporter stumbled upon an entourage of foreign tourists who had bypassed the official entrance to the ancient ruins of Loulan while doing research on the popular cultural heritage site. The reporter then went on to write about the park’s insufficient measures to ensure that access to the park is controlled and monitored, an oversight that threatens the longevity of the site.
- 6 December 2007: Over 7000 people have signed up to take the National Public Service Exam in Urumqi, which will be held on the 9th of December. This year, all testing locations will be in Urumqi.
- 6 December 2007: Since the start of winter, Alpine Ibex, Red Deer, have appeared in unprecedented numbers in A’ertai Mountain Region. According to still incomplete statistics, there are over 20 thousand of these animals distributed over two headwater areas in the mountains. This number is a substantial increase from the counts made in the 1990s, a change that is attributed to the decision in 2001 to make the two headwater areas wildlife reserve to counter the negative effects of mining, grazing, and hunting.
- 7 December 2007:Urumqi’s Ministry of Culture will soon be implementing an interesting and lucrative system to generate revenues off of the city’s bustling Karaoke industry: a “copyright fee” that karaoke companies must pay for every song that is played. This system was developed in April this year but was postponed until the proper monitoring software could be developed. Installation of this software should be complete with 15 of Urumqi’s karaoke clubs by the 20th of December. Ominously, the article also adds that the monitoring software has the added function of filtering out songs that do not meet the approval standards of the Ministry of Culture.
- 7 December 2007: Large-scale gold exploration and mining operations are expanding to reap the benefits of continuously rising global gold prices. Gold is often recognized in Xinjiang circles as yet another rich natural resource with high potential in bolstering Xinjiang’s economy alongside the oil and natural gas industries. An industry insider states that so long as gold prices continue rising and investment for mining operations continues to flow in, Xinjiang will soon become one of China’s primary gold production bases. The most intensive gold mining is currently being carried out at Tacheng, Aletai, Yining, Hami, Turpan, and Changji. Gold production for the first half of this year is twice as large as the amount produced for the same period last year and resulted in 300 million renminbi worth of revenue.
- 8 December 2007: The Urumqi Family Planning Commission will conduct trial research for an “early stage education program” aimed at children up to 3 years of age their parents and teachers from December to the end of 2008. The education program has been designed to fix “errors” that supposedly exist in contemporary rearing methods of Urumqi parents, and involves training parents and early-education teachers in the effective techniques of child education, child psychology, sanitation, and language learning. After the trial period, the results will be analyzed and, if successful, a second stage aimed at more widespread training will begin.
- 8 December 2007: According to the China Seismic Monitoring Network, a level 4 earthquake occured in Gongliu County (see in Google Earth) at 1:36 in the morning on the 8th.
- 8 December 2007: Experts recently completed a topological survey of the Lop Nur “Sea of Death”, producing high-resolution topographical maps which hopefully will open the door for more detailed exploration of the region. The “Sea of Death” was one of China’s officially designated “Uncharted Regions,” which are areas that still do not have corresponding 1:5 scale maps. Previously, topographical surveys of the Sea of Death were impossible due to safety and technological restrictions, but the recent maturation of Chinese survey technology lead to the Lop Nur survey project’s inauguration in October. The article states that the logical follow-up to the mapping of the Sea of Death is exploration surveys seeking oil, natural gas, asbestos, coal, gold, and sylvite.
- 8 December 2007: Medical advertisements containing medical experts and former patients are now officially banned in Xinjiang. The Xinjiang Broadcast, Movie, and Television Bureau has release a new set if guidelines regarding medical, especially pharmaceutical, advertisements. According to the article, there is a significant problem in Xinjiang of residents being persuaded into over-buying and over-using medical products due to dishonest advertisements that exaggerate effectiveness and conceal side-effects. Part of the governmental response to this situation is a total ban on medical specialists and patients lauding a product through advertisements.
- 8 December 2007: There are over 10 thousand official tour guides in Xinjiang. Although this is a reflection of Xinjiang’s rapidly growing tourism sector, Xinajing’s Tourism Bureau believes that the number of tour guides will soon reach a saturation point. In order to ensure a high quality among the increasing quantity of Xinjiang’s tour guides, adjustments have been made to the official tour guide examination, including an increase of difficulty and the addition of a Chinese language and literature section.
- 8 December 2007: Vegetation coverage of the Heavenly Lake scenic area is up to 45%, a welcome growth since 2003 when coverage was at 35%. The increase of vegetation is ascribed to the adoption of the “Ecological Heavenly Lake” plan in 2003 which mandated forest and river conservation engineering projects as well as nomadic resettlement.
Other News
- 8 December 2007: A comprehensive article at China.org.cn covering the nationwide phenomenon of meteorological espionage mentions the clandestine weather monitoring stations covered in last week’s news roundup.
