Sun Apr 3, 4:53 PM ET
KASHGAR, China (AFP) - Five-years into China’s highly touted “Great Western Development Program” and results are mixed in the legendary city of Kashgar where many Uighur Muslims see it as the “great western rip-off.” The program, launched in late 1999 with great fanfare by Beijing, aimed to bring China’s booming economic development to landlocked and ethnic minority regions like Tibet, Xinjiang, Qinghai and Inner Mongolia.While marking the fifth anniversary of the program, Premier Wen Jiabao said the multi-billion dollar plan would continue as part of the ruling Communist Party’s effort to build a “well off society” by 2050.
“We cannot speak of a well-off society in an all-round way if the western regions are left behind. We cannot say China has accomplished modernization if the western regions are not modernized,” Wen said.Over the past five years, the government has allocated some 460 billion yuan (about 55 billion dollars) for projects in its west, while offering 500 billion yuan in transfer payments and subsidies, Wen said.Much of the investment has been plowed into infrastructure projects like railway links to the Tibetan capital of Lhasa and to Kashgar and the building of thousands of kilometers (miles) of new roads and a bevy of power projects.Economic growth in the western region jumped from 8.3 percent in 2000 to over 11.3 percent in 2004, Wen said.
Still, about two-thirds of the nation’s population living in absolute poverty are in the west, while per capita gross domestic product in the region is only 40 percent of what it is along the eastern seaboard.In Kashgar, China’s western-most city famed as an oasis stopover on the Silk Road and a city with a history of simmering ethnic strife, the development program has changed the face of the town.This is largely due to a wave of Han Chinese migration that has followed investment flows.“Sure we have seen some changes, but who is benefitting? It is all for the Chinese, there is very little change for the Uighur population, we have not benefitted,” Mohamed Amin, a manufacturer of traditional Uighur handicrafts in Kashgar’s famous bazaar, told AFP.
"This is not the ‘great western development plan,’ it is the ‘great western rip off’."Others here echoed similar sentiments and cited the widescale extraction of oil, gas and mineral resources in Xinjiang autonomous region where Kashgar is located that is fueling the eastern seaboard’s economic boom.Meanwhile, Han traders from the east largely come to sell their wares to local Uighurs and to the neighboring Central Asian countries.Kashgar has seen an influx of Han Chinese migrants that has brought the total population to over 350,000 and resulted in the Uighur/Han population ratio rising from about 70/30 five years ago to about 50/50 today, Uighur activists say.
As for the 3.5 million predominantly Uighur farmers and herdsmen in the greater Kashgar prefecture, a region consisting of the city and 11 surrounding counties, lifestyles have only improved marginally in recent years.The influx of migrants has meant that the city has expanded into a typical modern-day Chinese town, while the legendary ancient oasis is bulldozed to make way for further development.And with the expansion has come racial tensions, with Uighurs complaining there is little attempt by incoming Han migrants to mix with them. Last month in his annual work report, Kashgar’s Communist Party secretary Shi Dagang laid out an ambitious plan to return Kashgar back to its former Silk Road glory.He envisages rebuilding it into Central Asia’s main trading center and a hub to extract and transport the region’s increasingly strategic energy reserves.
Such a plan will require the gross domestic product in Kashgar to reach 16.7 billion yuan in 2007, double that of 2000, and then double again by 2015.The plan, which has backing from the central government, calls for 30 percent annual growth in the region’s industry – mainly by developing agricultural processing and textile industries – which should result in the urban population of Kashgar growing to 1.2 million people.“If we make the necessary efforts, we can turn Kashgar into the economic hub of Central Asia, make it the great western gateway to our country and recreate the glory of the Silk Road,” Shi said in a speech posted on the Kashgar government website.
“This is not just an empty dream, this plan has a full and realizable theoretic base and is not only necessary, but is achievable,” Shi said.Although the plan received a relatively warm reception, many expressed serious doubts that it could realized.“The plan sounds nice, but they (government officials) are always saying nice things and things aren’t getting that much better for us,” said the Uighur handicraft maker Amin.“If Uighurs can’t get respect in our own homeland, if we can’t get equal opportunities to develop, if we can’t get bank loans for our projects, then the Uighur people are not going to benefit from any economic plan.”