China146;s westland

Yet just off the highway in Mazha village, life is little changed. Most people spend their days under the tyranny of sun and windblown dust, tending trellises of green grapes. Nearly all the villagers are Uighur, the Muslim ethnic minority that was the majority in Xinjiang before the arrival of Han Chinese, the dominant group in China. The highways funded by the government8217;s Develop the West initiative have brought little benefit here, the villagers complain.

8220;We Uighur people are all farmers,8221; said Gulijanat Tayir, a 17-year-old student. 8220;The Han people are running all the businesses.8221;

In the six years since China8217;s central government began its well-financed campaign to spread the benefits of economic growth beyond coastal provinces, the effort has exacerbated the extreme inequality that characterizes the national economy. Gaps have grown between urban and rural China and between the less-developed west and the frenetic east.

The Develop the West program was conceived in part to stem separatist inclinations in Xinjiang and other western provinces, where ethnic minority communities resent the continued influx of Han 8212; a migration encouraged by the central government.

Though sporadic and sometimes violent protests have persisted in Xinjiang since the advent of the program, observers say they are happening less frequently8212;a fact that Uighur groups attribute more to an aggressive crackdown by Chinese authorities than to the success of the campaign in spreading development.

8220;Among the key projects of the Develop the West program, the majority only benefit the east,8221; said Zhao Baotong, who heads the economics institute at the Shaanxi Academy of Social Sciences in the western city of Xian. 8220;These projects are transporting electricity, natural gas and other resources from the west to the east to fuel development there. Almost none of these projects are aiming at developing local manufacturing industry in the west.8221;

Since the initiative began in January 2000, the central government has set aside 106 billion for 60 major projects, such as rail and road expansions, hydroelectric dams, and oil pipelines. Thirty-nine projects have been completed, costing 56 billion, according to state figures.

Studies have shown that the investment has contributed to economic growth in the west, but the pace has fallen behind development in the east, where China8217;s nouveau riche and a growing middle class occupy increasingly glitzy cities. From 2000 to 2004, the overall growth of China8217;s 12 western provinces was behind that of 11 provinces and municipalities in the east by more than 12 percent, according to a study by the China Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing.

Extreme income gaps now separate Xinjiang from booming enclaves on the coast. In 1980, for example, the average annual income of people in Xinjiang was roughly equal to those in Zhejiang, a coastal province south of Shanghai. Last year, annual incomes in Xinjiang lagged behind those in Zhejiang by more than 1,000.

More than twice the size of Texas, Xinjiang has long occupied the fringes of Chinese domain, its inhospitable deserts once navigated by traders crossing the Silk Road from Europe to Asia. Today, a trip across the province reveals how the benefits of development are being spread unequally, even inside Xinjiang itself.

The great build-out of highways and the expansion of energy production encouraged by Beijing8217;s largesse have attracted millions of Han, who have come in a Gold Rush-like frenzy to capture some of the spoils of China8217;s modern-day frontier. The Han are now a slim majority among Xinjiang8217;s 19 million people. That has exacerbated tensions with the Turkic-speaking Uighurs, who have long regarded the Han as invaders.

Neon-lit shopping malls fill downtown Urumqi, the provincial capital, where Han Chinese merchants opened stores. In Kashgar known as Kashi in Mandarin Chinese, Xinjiang8217;s westernmost city 8212; an overgrown oasis that was a key stop on the Silk Road and remains famous for its raucous bazaar 8212;Han entrepreneurs have established trading houses aimed at central Asian countries to the west, selling plumbing supplies to Kyrgyzstan and roofing materials to Tajikistan. The rectangular office buildings of the Han merchants tower over the labyrinthine streets where Uighurs live in ancient brick homes.

Han Chinese road crews from Sichuan province camp in rough canvas tents along the Karakoram Highway, the road through blank desert expanses, past mountain lakes ringed by tents, and finally on to Pakistan, paving the last remaining stretches of dirt in anticipation of more traffic.

A mile down the road, Uighur villagers sat on stools in front of half-built brick homes as the wind blew trash down unpaved streets. Men used donkey carts to carry farm tools into the fields. 8220;We don8217;t have enough land,8221; complained Alim Pulat, the vice chief of Lianmuqing village. Families are dependent on middlemen traders to get their crops to customers in big cities.

With fields expanding and middlemen able to reach more areas, boosting supply, prices have dropped by as much as half since 2003. But the expansion of the roads and the electricity grid has produced several local factories 8212;a heating plant, a copper smelter8212;and they have provided jobs for local people, boosting incomes.

8220;It8217;s a little better than years past,8221; Alim said. 8220;We can eat. We have clothes to wear.8221; He shrugged when asked about the fairness of the Han getting more benefits from development: 8220;It is more convenient for Han to do business with one another.8221;