Full Text: Historical Witness to Ethnic Equality, Unity and Development in Xinjiang (15)

IX. State Support and Assistance to Xinjiang

The CPC and the Chinese government have always attached great importance to the development of Xinjiang, and have continuously increased their support and assistance. Over the past 60 years, the state's financial grants to Xinjiang totaled almost RMB1.7 trillion. The state and other provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the central government have at different times provided support to Xinjiang in various forms, acting as a strong driving force to boost the region's economic and social development.

State support has laid the foundation for Xinjiang's development. From the founding of the autonomous region to the launch of the reform and opening-up drive, the state had, by way of job allocation and job transfer, encouraged intellectuals and technical professionals to go to work in Xinjiang, called on young adults, urban educated youth and workers in inland areas of the country to support frontier development and encouraged demobilized service people to stay in Xinjiang and assigned them jobs there, thus fostering a generation of builders who have been hard-working and pioneering and took roots in the border areas. They have made an invaluable contribution to Xinjiang's economic and social development, to the cultivation and defense of the border regions as well as national security.

The state has supported Xinjiang to boost its development by adopting quite a number of measures, such as checking and ratifying on a yearly basis its balance of total revenues and expenditures, and turning in to the state the surplus while having the deficiency to be made up by the central budget; raising the proportion of budget reserves for ethnic minority areas; implementing preferential policies for ethnic trade companies; and establishing various special funds like special allowance funds of education for ethnic minority areas, and ethnic minority area allowances. From 1955 to 1978, the state subsidized Xinjiang with RMB7.19 billion accumulatively. With hefty state funds, many major infrastructure and other industrial projects in the region have been completed, including the Lanzhou-Urumqi Railway and the Karamay and Tarim oilfields.

The state has strengthened both policy and financial support to Xinjiang. Since the adoption of the reform and opening-up policy, the state has kept intensifying efforts to support Xinjiang in such fields as economy, education, science and technology, culture, medical services, ecological and environmental protection, and finance. From 1980 to 1988, the central budget provided a quota subsidy to Xinjiang with an average yearly increase of 10 percent. In 1994, when the state introduced tax revenue-sharing between the central and local authorities, it maintained the previous policies of providing subsidies and special allocations to ethnic minority areas. When it adopted transitional transfer payments the following year, it added special provision concerning the policy of transfer payments to ethnic minority areas.

The state has guided and encouraged businesses to invest in Xinjiang, and provided greater investment and financial support to Xinjiang. In 2005, it initiated pairing-assistance to the four prefectures and the three divisions under the XPCC in southern Xinjiang. In 2007, it promulgated the Opinions of the State Council on Further Boosting Xinjiang's Economic and Social Development.

The state has also trained and provided talents for Xinjiang. In the 1980s, it initiated a cooperative program between Xinjiang and more than 100 institutions of higher learning in other parts of the country, with the total enrollment eventually growing from 800 to 6,800. By 2014, these institutions had enrolled, accumulatively, 54,000 students of ethnic minority origins from Xinjiang, in addition to providing the autonomous region with 21,000 undergraduates and junior college graduates. In 2000, the state launched a program encouraging senior high schools in hinterland areas of the country to hold classes of students from Xinjiang, so far enrolling in total 70,000 from Xinjiang, 38,000 of whom have graduated, with 95 percent continuing their studies in colleges located in the developed provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions. Since 2003, junior high school classes have been set up in some cities of Xinjiang, enrolling to date a total of 61,300 students from remote impoverished aseas. Senior high school classes and secondary vocational classes were opened in 2011 in other parts of the country for Xinjiang students, which have thus far enrolled 13,200 students.

All of these senior-high-school and junior-high-school classes held in hinterland areas target mainly ethnic minority students from Xinjiang's farming and pasturing areas to offer them a better education. At present, more than 100,000 ethnic minority students are studying in nearly 600 schools in some 20 economically better developed provinces, municipalities directly under the central government and autonomous regions.

In 1996, the state began to extend support to Xinjiang's development by way of selecting and sending officials to work in Xinjiang. By 2014, it had sent eight complements numbering more than 11,000 officials and professionals. In 2004, a new initiative involved sending qualified professionals with doctor's degrees to work in the region. By 2014, 11 groups of 81 persons with doctor's degrees had gone and worked in the autonomous region through this project. (mo