Gubanova Lvanova's shopping list in China is surprisingly
detailed: tiles for the toilet made in south China, silk flowers
from east China and furniture made in China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.
Because of people like her from oil-rich Kazakhstan, the
wholesale market of construction materials, furniture and
accessories in Urumqi has become a landmark building in the
city.
"I can get every Chinese product I want here in Urumqi," Lvanova
says.
She came here to shop for her new house and buy things to sell
at home. "My friends and I will rent a cargo container and fill it
with all we can get here."
Not only the clients, but also goods sold in the market are
international -- pine trees were logged in Russia's forests,
shipped here by train, made into fine furniture and sold to the
West.
Xinjiang, the westernmost region of China, is once again
becoming a major trading point along the West-East trade route.
Last year its export and import volume reached a record nine
billion U.S. dollars with 550,000 people crossing the border.
REVIVING PAST GLORY
When Xinjiang was named "Xiyu," or Western Regions in Chinese,
it was the most international and multicultural melting pot in the
world with the great Silk Road running through it.
In a document from the Tang Dynasty 1,500 years ago, officials
from the Chinese government wrote, "West to Yinwu (today's Hami in
east Xinjiang), east to Persia, goods come and go non-stop,
caravans travel endlessly."
The Silk Road linked four major civilizations in the ancient
world: China, India, Persia and Roman Greece.
With it, China's silk, porcelain and printing technology were
taken to the West while spices, music and Buddhism spread to Far
East.
But this trade route through central Asia gradually lost its
significance in the age of sail.
"We were always complaining that Urumqi was so far from Beijing
or Shanghai that we hardly benefited from the country's economic
boom," said Hu Wei, deputy chairman of the Xinjiang Uygur
Autonomous Region.
But, with strong demand from both eastern China and Central
Asian countries, locals are changing their perspective of the
world.
"On a map of China, Xinjiang is the westernmost border, but on a
map of Eurasia, Xinjiang is the geographical center. It could be
the intersection of East and West and the frontier of China to the
West," Hu said.
Businessmen from the east have flocked to seize the
opportunities. Some come to sell and the others to buy raw
materials from across the border.
Hisense, a leading electronic appliance manufacturer from east
China, has set up a TV factory in Kashgar, southwest Xinjiang;
Uni-President Enterprises Corp., a Taiwan food producer, has an
instant noodle plant here; SK Telecom, from South Korea, has
founded a mobile phone plant.
"Xinjiang has the best access to Central Asia and further west,
" said Yang Wenyi, a shoe retailer from east China's Zhejiang
Province who runs a store in Urumqi.
The region shares borders with eight countries and has 15
state-level land ports, two international airports and 11
provincial land ports. Passenger buses and trucks run on 103
cross-border roads.
Yang says that after Central Asian buyers order shoes, he sends
the orders back to his suppliers in Zhejiang and the shoes are
either loaded on to a train at Lianyungang, an east China harbor
linked with Xinjiang by a national railway, or on trucks to one of
land ports in Xinjiang.
The old Silk Road ended in the east at Chang'an, the ancient
Chinese capital (today's Xi'an in Shaanxi Province), but the modern
trade route extends to the coast.
At the Alataw Pass on the China-Kazakhstan border, China's
second largest land port, half of the new exports in the first half
of this year were goods imported from Japan, South Korea and the
United States through Tianjin harbor in north China, says Hu
Wei.
Meanwhile, the economic growth of Xinjiang averaged 10.1 percent
annually over the past five years.
In 2006, the industrial sector, driven by investment from
outside and foreign trade, increased by 13.5 percent and services
by 10.7 percent.
Aishanaj, a young Uygur man running a small textile shop in the
big bazaar of Kashgar, says, "The last two summers, business was
really good. Middlemen from the north came here to buy silk,
scarves and carpets."
Kashgar, once the Silk Road's main intersection, is a wholesale
market of foreign goods from South Asia and Europe thanks to its
location near the China-Pakistan border port Kunjirap.
At Aishanaj's 15-square-meter shop, clients buy silk scarves
from Italy, shawls from Pakistan and carpets from Turkey.
He sells 50,000 yuan (6,648 U.S. dollars) worth of goods a month
in summer, the high season, to middlemen and tourists from the
east. INFRASTRUCTURE FIRST
The camel caravans are consigned to history, but this year the
region has spent 10 billion yuan (1.33 billion U.S. dollars)
building highways with a total distance of 9,523 km, and a major
project is to link Horgos, another China-Kazakhstan border town,
with Lianyunkang.
A railway is under construction to connect Horgos with the
national railway network so that Xinjiang will have the country's
second railway border crossing after the Alataw Pass.
Urumqi started expanding its international airport with an
investment of 2.8 billion yuan (372.34 million U.S. dollars) in
April. It will be the fourth regional air center in China after
Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.
At a meeting of the State Council, China's cabinet, on
Wednesday, Xinjiang was singled out by Premier Wen Jiabao as
"having strategic significance to China's development and
stability".
According to the press release, more efforts would be made to
improve transport and power supplies and speed up bilateral or
regional free trade in Central Asia.
"The central government will continue giving more support to
Xinjiang," the press release said.
(Xinhua News Agency September 22, 2007)
