Having been fortunate enough to have made three separate trips to Xinjiang over 15 years, I believe some observations may be of interest to P&I readers.

Let’s start with a bit of geography. I very much doubt that most of the world’s population would be able to pinpoint even an approximate location for this enormous piece of geography, let alone be able to name the capital (spoiler alert: Urumqi, population four million out of Xinjiang’s eight million).

This is a bit unfortunate, given that Xinjiang’s area is a massive 643,000 miles, making up 1/6 of China’s total land area. It is about 21% the size of Australia and almost three times the size of France.

Roughly split into two halves, north and south, by the enormous Tien Shan Mountain range, which towers at almost 7500 metres and stretches 1500 miles across Xinjiang into Kazakhstan and beyond, these mountains are the main source of water for this otherwise desert region.

Xinjiang does “weather” big time; winters fall to -30 C and summers hit a scorching +40 °C. Ferocious winds are rather typical and annual rainfall ranges from below 2” a year to a max of 30” in the Tien Shan Mountains.

Historically, the inhabitants of this part of the world lived in isolated oasis villages at the odd spots where water came to the surface, isolated except when visited by the camel trains of the Silk Road as they passed to and fro across this incredibly inhospitable land.

Meanwhile, the “Great Game” between the Cossacks of Russia and the British Empire was played out around Kashgar in the 19th century.

Until about eight to 10 years ago, except a for few intrepid travellers, this part of the world remained far off the average person’s radar. Still, around 2019 everything changed when one Arian Zenz, a German researcher, popped into the limelight with all sorts of wild claims (based on statistics rather than actual verification) that Beijing was inflicting some kind of mass genocide on the Uyghur population of Xinjiang.

This sort of stuff was, of course, made to measure for the anti-China brigade in Washington, London, Canberra, etc., the perfect hammer to bash China; the poor, undeserving Uyghur minority inhabitants of Xinjiang were being eradicated to make way for Han Chinese to move into this resource-rich area.

A quick check on Google Trends for uses of “Xinjiang Genocide” shows hits at zero up to September 2019, then peaking in March 2021 while falling away to 25% of the peak by mid-2022.

Today, Xinjiang Genocide has fallen out of the public interest; despite the best efforts of outfits like the US National Endowment for Democracy and the World Uyghur Congress to keep it in view, it is now overshadowed by events in Gaza which are livestreamed into our living rooms unlike Xinjiang where the best evidence anyone could come up with is some sketchy analysis by ASPI showing satellite images of what were claimed to be prison camps and some unverifiable first person claims by Uyghurs living in the US.

Turning now to the situation on the ground. First and foremost, as has been pointed out above, this part of the world is extraordinarily inhospitable. Of course, it could be left as some sparsely inhabited desert region where a few herders eke out some kind of living in extremely harsh conditions, kind of interesting for anthropologists to study but hardly an appropriate standard of living for the 21st century.

Or, as has been the case, it can be brought into a modern-day environment through the introduction of massive infrastructure development, which, of course, China does best. Travelling through this region, covering probably 10,000 km over the years, one is constantly amazed by what one sees.

The landscape is crisscrossed with endless miles of high-quality roads, including the massive G30 highway that runs from eastern China all the way to the Kazakhstan border, passing some incredible tunnels and bridges in the last 200 km. This multi-lane highway carries an enormous amount of commercial traffic heading west to the border and beyond, general goods, cars, sections of wind turbine towers, and even massive 80-metre-plus turbine blades fill the road and truck stop vehicle parks. Interestingly, while few if any of these trucks use diesel fuel, and many use LPG, there is also widespread use of the environmentally friendly (and economical) Compressed Natural Gas fuel with the large tanks mounted behind the driver’s cabin.

Besides the highway, one can catch glimpses of both a new high-speed train track and the conventional railway track carrying enormously long goods trains to and from Europe.

And looping beside and across the highway is an incredible network of high-tension distribution lines, bringing electricity to even the remotest areas while massive pipelines carry gas and oil from the neighbouring “stans”.

Let us also not overlook the fact that 5G coverage is available in all but the most inaccessible spots, bringing even the remotest villages into direct communication with the outside world.

Where there is sufficient water, there is intensive farming, huge areas are devoted to cotton production, and also corn and other staples, all being grown in modern productive methods using gigantic agricultural machinery.

And where there is just inhospitable desert, good use has been made of the real estate with the creation of massive wind farms and solar farms stretching as far as the eye can see, pumping electricity through the extensive electrical grid, not just for local consumption but for export to the eastern regions of China.

And yes, there has been a massive migration of Han Chinese into this part of China, hard-working, entrepreneurial people who have brought skills and resources to this otherwise barren part of the world.

Now, for my personal experience. On both my most recent trip, where I travelled solo, and on the previous trip with a larger group, the guide was a local Uyghur man, James.

James was born in the oasis town of Turpan, one of the hottest places on earth, and trained as a teacher. He always had the ambition to see the world, so about 20 years ago he went into tourism, becoming a guide.

James was more than happy to share his life experiences with me.

He lives comfortably in Urumqi with his wife (who works as a translator at a TV station) and two daughters.

His parents, both retired teachers, now live about 500 km from Urumqi, enjoying an adequate government pension.

Every year for the past five years, James and his sisters pay for their parents to escape the brutal Xinjiang winter by flying the six hours to Sanya, Hainan (China’s Hawaii) where they stay for about five months.

From what I gather, there is a vibrant Uyghur community established in Sanya, complete with a wealth of Uyghur restaurants and so on.

James and his family join them for a few weeks each winter.

Fortunately for James, he has picked a good profession as there has been a huge uptake in domestic tourism to Xinjiang; the massive new international airport is a hive of activity.

I did, of course, raise the question of the treatment of Uyghurs with James, and his response was, I think, very fair: you cannot keep everyone happy all of the time, there will always be differences.

In conclusion, I cannot claim to be an expert on Xinjiang, I have only visited and not lived there. Still, I think I can claim to have seen with my own eyes the kind of development process that surely leads to a better standard of living for the population of this extraordinary part of the world.

Yes, there will always be those who want to dig up historical arguments to claim that Xinjiang is not a part of China and will want to stir up unrest. Of course, there will always be many in Western governments and the Western media who will like to use this to bolster their anti-China propaganda, and sanctions whose only impact has been to reduce the living standards of the inhabitants of Xinjiang.

But at the same time, this has hardened the determination of the people to establish a modern society on this inhospitable, but beautiful, part of the world.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.