Natives Feel Left Out of China's New West

The great build-out of highways and the expansion of energy production encouraged by Beijing's largesse have attracted millions of Han, who have come in a Gold Rush-like frenzy to capture some of the spoils of China's modern-day frontier. The Han are now a slim majority among Xinjiang'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), Xinjiang's westernmost city -- an overgrown oasis that was a key stop on the Silk Road and remains famous for its raucous bazaar -- 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 featureless 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.

Even in Tashgurkan, a cluster of low buildings beneath snow-capped peaks in the desolate country near the Pakistan border, pioneering Han Chinese have established restaurants and supermarkets to cater to road workers.

In Shanshan, in the low-lying Turpan Valley, Feng Meng, 28, successfully made the jump to the white-collar ranks, aided in part by the government's Develop the West program.

Feng's parents, Han Chinese, were dispatched from coastal Jiangsu province during the Cultural Revolution to improve grape-growing techniques. Their college-educated son is now a technical manager at Xinjiang Loulan Wine Co., perhaps the world's most unusually situated chateau: Cabernet sauvignon and Riesling grapes spring from desert sands, destined for Italian-made steel tanks and French oak barrels resting in the cool of the basement. The highway improvements of recent years have allowed the winery to ship its products all over China and to Japan, Korea and Southeast Asia. Over the past decade, production has nearly doubled.

"Before, even if we had the product, it was hard to ship it out," Feng said. Feng earns almost $400 a month, roughly 10 times his parents' former wages. He has saved almost $12,000, enough to buy a house. "The future looks better and better," he said.

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. "We don't have enough land," 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 -- a heating plant, a copper smelter -- and they have provided jobs for local people, boosting incomes.

"It's a little better than years past," Alim said. "We can eat. We have clothes to wear."

He shrugged when asked about the fairness of the Han getting more benefits from development. "It is more convenient for Han to do business with one another," he said.

But many Uighurs complain that even when they strive to transcend rural confines, they are denied the benefits, because they lack fluency in Mandarin Chinese, the national language. "If I'm looking for a job, the first thing they want to know is what's my Chinese level, and if it's not up to par, they say, 'Go away,' " said Rayila, a 20-year-old university student in Urumqi.

Kuche, a town whose red soils hold some of China's largest reserves of oil and natural gas, has become a hub for giant state energy firms. Service trucks navigate a network of recently built roads. The West-East pipeline carries natural gas more than 2,000 miles across the country to Shanghai. On the edge of the city, a network of refineries has sprung up, turning crude oil into gasoline.

"Yes, there's oil here, but the money doesn't reach ordinary people," said a man near the crumbling walls of the ancient city, as two men squatted in the dirt, tinkering with the innards of a weathered car. "This is all we've got," he said, holding out empty palms.

Special correspondent Eva Woo contributed to this report.