A grand gathering to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the founding of northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region was held in Urumqi on Thursday morning. Chinese President Xi Jinping joined local officials and members of the public from all ethnic groups and all walks of life at the event.
Xi, who is also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, has led a central delegation to Xinjiang for the celebrations, marking the first time in the history of the Party and the country that such an arrangement has been made.
Having heard work reports from the CPC Xinjiang regional committee and the regional government on Wednesday, Xi urged efforts to build a socialist modern Xinjiang that is characterized by unity, harmony, prosperity, affluence, cultural progress and a sound eco-environment, where people live and work in peace and contentment.
With policy support and hard work, Xinjiang has undergone profound changes in past decades and now is advancing modernization in step with the rest of the country.
By the end of 2020, Xinjiang, once one of China's most impoverished areas, had emerged from poverty alongside the rest of China, lifting 3.06 million rural residents out of destitution, according to the white paper titled "CPC Guidelines for Governing Xinjiang in the New Era: Practice and Achievements."
The regional GDP hit over 2 trillion yuan (around $281.4 billion) in 2024, 203 times that of 1955, reaching an average annual growth rate of 8 percent, said Wang Huning, chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, at the grand gathering.
Wang added that the population of Xinjiang has increased from 4.78 million in 1953 to 25.85 million in 2020, with the ethnic minority populations growing from 4.45 million to 14.93 million during the same period.
When meeting with representatives from all ethnic groups in the region on Tuesday, Xi extended greetings to them and urged concerted efforts to better build a beautiful Xinjiang.
Exploring high-quality development
In recent years, Xinjiang has leveraged its rich natural resources and geographic advantages to transform from a simple resource supplier into a vibrant modern industrial hub and from a remote inland region to a forefront of openness.
The region is emerging as a national base for high-quality agricultural products. Xinjiang achieved the highest grain yield per unit area in China for 2024, with an average of 7872.75 kilograms per hectare, and the cotton output reached nearly 5.69 million tonnes, accounting for 92.3 percent of the national total, said the white paper.
It is also building itself into a strategic base of the nation's energy resources. Installed capacity of electricity hit 192.7 million kW in 2024, of which capacity from new energy sources surpassed 100 million kW, said the white paper.
During Wednesday's meeting, Xi emphasized that Xinjiang should leverage its resource and industrial strengths to explore a high-quality development path suited to its local conditions and foster its new quality productive forces accordingly.
Xi also urged Xinjiang to accelerate the building of the core area along the Silk Road Economic Belt during the meeting.
Bordering eight countries, Xinjiang has become a crucial link between Asia and Europe. In 2024, a total of 16,400 China-Europe freight trains passed through the region, marking the fifth consecutive year that the number of trains exceeded 10,000.
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