Over 30 foreign-aid projects with $200 million in foreign capital have been approved to establish infrastructure facilities in the vast agricultural and animal husbandry areas of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

These schemes relate to agricultural irrigation, drainage and environmental protection, high-yield agricultural crops, experimental cultivation, disease prevention, conversion of water courses, creation of modern pasture, and research on sheep and cattle breeding. Some of these plans have achieved good results in rural areas south and north of the Tianshan Mountains. After five years, the 40,000-hectare demonstration base for comprehensive animal husbandry in the Altay Grasslands, granted free assistance by the UN Food Program, has opened up over 30,000 hectares.It has set up grazing land, dug a network of canals, and built a large freely controllable irrigation system. This releases 5,200 Kazak herder households from seasonal migration in search of better grazing ground. They can now settle permanently to engage in pastoral pursuits, heightening their livestock's resistance to disaster. Last year, the $125 million World Bank loans directed at a 200,000-hectare agricultural and animal husbandry development program in the Tarim River basin were used to open up wasteland and transform 36,000 hectares of low-yield fields.

Incomplete statistics indicate Xinjiang has employed foreign funds to develop useless acreage, transform low-yield fields, and create 114,000 hectares of pastureland and 5,800 hectares of farmland and spray-irrigation projects. In 1992, the region's cotton and beet growing area was expanded by 100,000 hectares.