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The story of Almijan, a gaunt 31-year-old former silk trader with nervous eyes, has all the markings of a public health nightmare. A longtime heroin addiction caused him to burn through $60,000 in life savings. Today, he says, all of his drug friends have AIDS and yet continue to share needles and to have sex with a range of women - their wives, prostitutes or, as he said, "whoever."
Despite a spate of bombings and a huge Chinese military presence, ethnic ties in China's northwestern region of Xinjiang are enjoying their "best period in history," a regional official said on Tuesday.
In mainland China's desolate Northwest, in a place called Xinjiang, the boom is on. With a number of big deals in energy and agriculture over the past few months, government deregulation and tax breaks have combined with millions of dollars of foreign investment to build up Xinjiang as China's new "New Frontier."
In an economic report made on November 28 last year in Urumchi, Chairman of the local government of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region Ablet Abdurashid reported that "the average per capita income in the cities and towns of Xinjiang in 2000 was 5,870 yuan, while that of the farmers was 1,620 yuan" and that "Xinjiang occupies the second place among the five northwestern regions and provinces of China in terms of economic development and the 12th place in the country in terms of gross output per capita.
The story of Almijan, a gaunt 31-year-old former silk trader with nervous eyes, has all the markings of a public health nightmare. A longtime heroin addiction caused him to burn through $60,000 in life savings. Today, he says, all of his drug friends have AIDS and yet continue to share needles and to have sex with a range of women - their wives, prostitutes or, as he said, "whoever."