My family is not originally from Xin Jiang. My mother's family moved there from He Nan during the 1960's because it became increasingly difficult for them to make a living on their farm. Moving to Xin Jiang promised more opportunities and a better life. My grandfather was a skilled carpenter, and he managed to make a good living in Xin Jiang because it was still largely undeveloped, and skilled craftsmen were hard to come by. Since then, my mother's family has lived in Xin He, a small town in the southern area of Xin Jiang.

My father also ended up there, but his story is much more interesting. My Grandfather was a high-ranking officer for the Nationalist army during the Chinese civil war. When the Communists were winning the war, he left my dad with his grandmother in Beijing, hoping to go and retrieve him during

Xin Jiang is now one of the larger self-sufficient economic regions in China. Still, it received subsidies from Beijing to keep up the industrialization and modernization. The motto directing the progress in Xin Jiang is "agriculture is the foundation and industry is the leading factor" (Chen). After the liberation of Xin Jiang, a major land reform took place. Land-poor of landless farmers were given an equal share of land and former landlords also got a share of land to support themselves. Because the peasants still needed to be educated about the tools of modernizations, labor-exchange brigades, mutual aid teams, cooperatives, and communes were created (Chen). In addition to these farms, there were also farms cultivated by the People's Liberation Army (PLA). The PLA made their first presence in Xin Jiang in 1949. They were sent there to defend and help build agriculture in Xin Jiang. In the first group of soldiers to go to Xin Jiang, there were 200,000. This could!

Another result of the PLA's presence in Xin Jiang is the hundreds of kilometers of windbreakers. Because of the geography of Xin Jiang, the strong winds carry massive amounts of sand, and is a great threat to agriculture. Along most major roads and around large agricultural areas, there are walls of poplar trees planted to protect the people and agriculture within those walls. This allowed huge areas of wastelands to be opened up for cultivation. Even today the PLA is still hard at work in the dessert opening up new lands for agriculture. The PLA has also helped immensely with the creation of the reservoirs and new irrigation canals that feed the farms in Xin Jiang. Many of the PLA farms now have become state farms and the servicemen demobilized, left there to continue helping Xin Jiang grow.

vel. They handle their money within limits prescribed by the constitution but they have wider powers than other provinces. Xin Jiang has enjoyed autonomy since October 1, 1955.

For centuries China was ruled by emperors and the power kept transferring, dynasty-to-dynasty, undisturbed. This was to end in the 1900's, however. Since the 1840's, profound economic and social changes had taken place in China. Most notable of these changes was the development of a new middle class of merchants and industrial entrepreneurs. As this middle class grew, they wanted a government more in tune with their needs and who protected their interests. (Chen) Soon, the dynasties were overthrown, and China went through a series of different leaders before the Communist government was instated and it became The People's Republic of China.

The history of Xin Jiang is a turbulent one. It's story stretches from before the time of the silk-road to modern day. It has all the makings of a fairy-tale or a Hollywood movie, with despotic rulers, war, exotic locations, heroes, and redemption. The point in time I want to focus on is from Xin Jiang in the 1940's to Xin Jiang today. In the past 40 years it has undergone tremendous change and advancements in agriculture and industry. I want to explore how these changes happened and what the results are. I also want to talk about the personal experiences of the people who lived in Xin Jiang and witnessed these changes and what they think of what has happened.

Industry in Xin Jiang has also been the subject of many advancements. After the implementations and beginnings of agricultural advances, the focus shifted to light industry, and then to heavy industry. The basic guidelines governing all the enterprises in China, including Xin Jiang, has been "Take agriculture as the foundation and industry as the leading factor" and "Develop agriculture, light industry, and heaving industry" in that order (Chen). By creating light industry, agricultural advances are

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Approximate Word count = 2560
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page double spaced)