The New Dominion

This week saw even more year-end statistics, the publishing of software that can recognize Uyghur, Kazakh, and Kirghiz writing on scanned images, yet another closure of the Urumqi International Airport, the opening of the new Korla airport, the establishment of a giant panoptic XPCC health information archive, and a giant fireball siting over west-central Xinjiang that may have been a meteor… or may have been something else. More, under the break.

 

Xinhua Network News Xinjiang Channel 新华网新疆频道

• 24 December 2007: Over 100 thousand farmers and herders in remote regions have received benefits from the “Electricity for Every Household Project” and are now able to bid farewell to oil lamps and wood-burning heating. The “Electricity for Every Household Project” was started jointly by the XUAR People’s Government and the National Power Network Company in 2006. Since its inauguration, the project has been implemented far ahead of schedule, with a current total of 336 million yuan having been invested in the construction of power converters and power lines necessary to provide electricity to remote regions.
• 25 December 2007: A certain Mr. Xu was sentenced to two years in prison on December 24th for attempting to extort the Urumqi Carrefour for 50 thousand yuan two months previously. On the 5th of September, Xu called the Carrefour to tell them to deposit 50 thousand yuan in a designated bank account without informing the police, otherwise he would detonate a bomb he had planted in the storage room via remote control. The Carrefour administration immediately evacuated the store and informed the authorities, causing a swarm of armed police and explosives specialists to descend on the abandoned supermarket. No explosives were found, and detectives of the Urumqi police department arrested Xu at an Internet bar the next day.
• 25 December 2007: From January to the end of November, Xinjiang saw 400 thousand foreign tourists and received 148 million American dollars worth of tourism revenue. At 34%, Russians constitute the largest portion of foreign tourist.
• 25 December 2007: The economic efficiency of state-owned enterprise increased by a substantial margin from January to November of this year. Total sales revenues for SOEs reached 25.3 billion yuan, a 20.1% increase since last year. The metal, coal, chemical engineering, foodstuffs, textiles, and trade industries saw the most significant improvements.
• 25 December 2007: From the beginning of this year to the 24th ofDecember the Qaramay oilfields produced a total of 11.5 million tons of crue oil. This years total is higher than last year, and thus adds the 27th year to a continual changing of increasing oil output.
• 26 December 2007: The Xinjiang software company Sarka has developed a software that can recognize Uyghur, Kazakh, and Kyrgyz text from image files and convert them into text. With this software, an individual can scan documents written in these languages or take photographs of texts and then convert them into editable text files. The program was the product of a join effort between the company, the Information Science and Engineering Institute of Xinjiang University, and Qinghua University’s Electrical Engineering Department.
• 26 December 2007: The Disaster Relief Office of the regional Civil Affairs Department has allocated 42 million kuai to aid residents stricken by natural calamities to make it through the winter. This winter a large number of Xinjiang residents are affected by natural disasters such as abnormally high snowfall, torrential rain, hailstorms, floods, landslides, mudslides, strong winds, droughts, and low temperature conditions. The disaster relief aid will be used to provide affected residents with food rations, clothes, and coal.
• 26 December 2007: By 2008, all agricultural and pastoral regions in Xinjiang will be covered by the New Model
  Cooperative Medical Treatment system. In acknowledgment of this complete coverage, the central and regional governments have decided to increase financial support for the program, which involves both financial subsidies to support those with illnesses and providing special training to residents so that emergencies and illnesses can be treated locally.
• 26 December 2007: Three Xinjiang gold mining companies will receive a total of 7.6 million yuan of funding from the national government, to be used for gold exploration and for environmental protection. Xinjiang’s gold mining industry has been receiving governmental funding since 2004, and this year’s addition pins the government’s total investment in the regional mining industry to 15.7 million yuan. Xinjiang is considered one of China’s most important gold industry bases; this year’s gold production statistics put Xinjiang at 8th place in China’s national gold mining industry.
• 26 December 2007: Urumqi International Airport was closed for the first time this winter due to heavy snowfall on the 26th from 11am to 6pm.
• 27 December 2007: In order to improve business relations between the XPCC and its clients and to promote even faster and better economic development through the Bingtuan’s myriad industries, Huaxia Bank has signed a comprehensive strategic cooperation agreement with Bingtuan officials which will grant XPCC controlled industries and XPCC work unit employees greater and smoother access to the bank’s resources, including loans, account management, and other financial services.
• 28 December 2007: This year the total value of Xinjiang foreign trade was substantially hire than the national average. The total value of imports and exports from January to November of this year reached 12.3 billion American dollars, a 50% increase compared with the same period last year and a 26.5 percentage points higher than the national average.
• 28 December 2007: The safe landing of a China Southern Airlines Boeing 757 airliner marked the official opening of Korla’s new airport. The construction of a new, larger airport to replace Korla’s previous one was a national level project aimed at consolidating Korla’s role as a hub between Northern and Southern Xinjiang and between Xinjiang and the rest of the country. A total of 630.3 million yuan was invested in the project.
• 28 December 2007: The XPCC Health Department announced plans to begin construction next year of comprehensive health archive which within three years will contain the basic medical information and statistics of all 2.58 million members of the XPCC. Upon completion of this medical archive, XPCC health services will be able to provide quicker outpatient services, develop more efficient immunization plans, improve health education, better monitor epidemic and contagious diseases, and give better recover and rehabilitation programs to XPCC patients.
• 29 December 2007: This year 1025 kilometers of highways were opened for use, an increase of about 136% compared to high construction over the previous five years. Before the 1990s, Xinjiang didn’t have even one kilometer of highway, now, the XUAR Transportation Department has managed to connect Urumqi with every prefecture and every prefecture-level capital with all of its internal counties. In all there are 145 thousand kilometers of highway in Xinjiang.
• 29 December 2007: Masses of people from Kuche, Xinhe, Baicheng, and as far away as Korla saw a massive fireball in the sky on the night of the 27th. At around 8:50PM, Beijing time, witnesses saw an object in the sky so bright that in some places it seemed like daylight. One witness described the object as a “red-hot chunk of iron” that left a bright trail in the sky similar to the contrails of an airplane. The object was visible for about 10 seconds, then, 5 seconds after the fireball disappeared witnesses report hearing a loud boom. Police from the Xinhe PSB dispatched two expeditions to find any trace of the object but none was found. Meteorite? Likely. Alien invaders? Well, let’s just say if I were an alien overlord I’d definitely choose Xinjiang as a nice, remote, resource-rich, sparsely populated, spacious base of operations to begin my nefarious conquest. I suppose time will tell.
• 29 December 2007: From the beginning of its operation to the 25th of this month, the China-Kazakhstan crude oil pipeline has transported 4.7 million tons of oil, worth 2.4 billion American dollars.
• 29 December 2007: The 20th and final meeting of the 9th Regional People’s Political Consultative Conference ended on the afternoon of the 28th. The primary goal of the meeting was to elect delegates for the 10th Regional People’s Political Consultative Conference, whose first meeting will be held on the 13th of next year. The members of the 10th RPPCC can be found here.

Other News

•  26 December 2007: The People’s Daily Online provides some English language coverage on the recent closure of Urumqi airport.
• 26 December 2007: China View provides a picture gallery to celebrate the completion of the renovation of Kashgar’s old town.
• 28 December 2007: China Daily runs an article on Pimo, a small town on the southern edge of the Taklamakan Desert and home to some miraculous desert reclamation efforts.

Tags: annual statistics, aviation, banking, computers, crime, electricity, energy, gold, investments, kashgar, kazakhstan, medical care, natural disasters, odditites, oil, pipelines, RPPCC, social welfare, SOEs, software, tourism, transportation, XPCC