The Hoboksar Mongolian autonomous county in Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region has made great progress in terms of economic and social development in recent years.

Hoboksar Mongolian autonomous county is the birthplace of Jangar culture, which dates back to the 15th century.

A combination of poetry and dance, Jangar is one of China's most important ethnic art forms. The epic dance mostly hinges on the depiction and praise of the Mongolian hero Jangar.

To build up its brand and increase its popularity, the county has worked to maintain its traditional cultural and grassland resources. In recent years, it began offering so-called nomad tours to highlight its wealth of natural beauty.

The county also takes care of elderly Jangar performers in the region, to whom it looks to teach the next generation. They are invited to teach at training bases for youngsters.

The Jangar School, established in 1999, is located in the Menggeng Bulake, where people of the Mongolian ethnicity are the majority.

This year, the county held the fifth Jangar Cultural Festival and the second Jangar Forum, which seek to add a cultural flavor to local tourism development.

Improving livelihood

Hoboksar , a western county on Xinjiang's border, has traditionally been a herding area for centuries.

However, thanks to a batch of policies benefiting ordinary people that were enacted in recent years, local residents are enjoying a life that is a far cry from the hardscrabble existence of their nomadic ancestors.

"We have staged nine policies to improve people's livelihood: resettle the farmers and herders in the town; provide free 15-year fundamental education, which makes the county a leader in Xinjiang and even China as a whole; subsidize senior locals aged 80 and over; offer free accommodation to students from farming and herding families who study in the town; free hospitalization in the town's health clinics for local farmers and herders; build up the first charity hospital in the town; give priority to poor families to resettle in the town; free wireless digital TV services to local residents; and grant high-rate reimbursement for health care insurers," said Xue Junqiang, Party chief of the county.

In addition to bettering the living environment in rural herding areas, the county has intensified the reconstruction in its old town and shanty areas. In the past three years, a total of 550,000 square meters of urban areas were reconstructed.

And the greening project in the town has greatly changed the urban appearance, making local residents feel happy and proud.

A total of 250 million yuan ($39 million) has been poured into the county's infrastructure construction in the past three years. Six hundred herding households in 2010, and 1,200 in 2011, moved to new houses in town.

The county started to offer free senior high education in the spring of 2010, exempting tuition fees for 1,051 students.

In 2012, the county started free education for kids in kindergartens, which means that local residents can enjoy education from kindergarten to high school for free for 15 years.

Furthermore, 11 county health clinics offer free hospitalization to local farmers and herders, and 18,000 farmers and herders have access to free yearly check-ups.

"A total of 2.5 billion yuan has been poured into 793 livelihood projects in the past three years," Xue added.

Resources

The county is rich in 30 kinds of mineral resources. Its reserves of crude oil, natural gas, coal, salt, limestone and 10 other kinds of mineral resources exceed more than 100 million tons. Its reserves are among the largest in China and their quality is among the highest.

The county is especially rich in coal resources, with proven reserves amounting to more than 50 billion tons. And the high-quality reserves in the Baiyanghe area total 36 billion tons, making the area ideal for coal electricity and coal chemical projects, according to assessments by experts.

In September 2011, Xinjiang government approved the county's Hefeng Industrial Park as an industrial park at the provincial level.

When inspecting the county, Zhang Chunxian, Xinjiang's top official, said, "Hoboksar Mongolian autonomous county has rich resources, convenient transportation and comprehensive affiliated facilities for coal chemical and salt chemical development. The county should quicken the pace of its industrialization construction to make it the main economic booster in the region."

With support from the provincial government, the county is quickly translating its wealth of natural resources into advantages in terms of economic development.

At the end of 2011, a project by Xuzhou Mining Business Group that produces synthetic natural gas, or SNG, settled in the county.

The project aims to produce 4 billion cubic meters of SNG annually from 2011 to 2015, with an investment of 30 billion yuan. It will bring 4.5 billion yuan in tax revenue to the county and 7,000 job opportunities to the local populace.

Following the county's 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015), the industrial added value is expected to increase 43.43 percent year-on-year, and cumulative investment will reach 4.7 billion yuan, with an annual increase of 71.15 percent. At present, there are four enterprises in the county that have a production value of at least 100 billion yuan, and five with 50 million yuan.

At the end of 2011, the county's GDP reached 2.2 billion yuan, an increase of 23.5 percent year-on-year. The increased income per capita for local farmers and herders topped 1,000 yuan.

"With support from the country and Xinjiang's government, the county has developed at an unprecedented speed. We are confident the county has a brighter future," Xue said.

Contact the writers at maoweihua@chinadaily.com.cn