Xinjiang relocates 460k residents

Provides career, Putonghua training for employable skills

Authorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in Northwest China relocated 461,000 poverty-ridden residents to work in other parts of the region during the first quarter of the year, in what a Chinese expert on Friday said was a bid to improve social stability and alleviate poverty.

Data shows that 461,000 residents in Xinjiang villages were relocated during the first three months of the year, People’s Daily reported on Thursday.

The Xinjiang government plans to transfer 100,000 residents in southern Xinjiang’s Hotan and Kashi by 2019, to get employed somewhere else, the report said.

Poverty alleviation in Xin- jiang is more difficult compared to other places because, aside from poverty, Xinjiang also faces “ethnic issues,” Yu Shaoxiang, an expert on social security and poverty relief legislation at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Friday.

Most of the poverty-stricken counties in southern Xinjiang suffer from a poor living environment and insufficient infrastructure, the Xinhua News Agency reported in January. The area has also been prone to terrorism.

Now many parts of Xinjiang have begun to make use of their abundant resources and developed local industries. For example, Aksu Prefecture, which boasts of good quality cotton, has attracted 92 apparel factories and employs 24,000 people, said People’s Daily.

Xinjiang governments have also moved 2,410 people from four prefectures in southern Xinjiang for jobs elsewhere, Xinjiang Daily reported in January.

Organizing people to work away from home would help them better integrate with the rest of China, and take their advanced skills back to Xinjiang later, Yu said. The relocation also helps maintain regional security, he said.

Compared with other parts of China, Yu said the education level of southern Xinjiang residents is relatively low, and learning how to speak Putonghua – the standard spoken and written Chinese language – is key to landing a job outside Xinjiang.

To tackle these problems, the Xinjiang government provided career and Putonghua training all over the region to make sure at least one person in a family possesses employable skills.

This year, the government will provide specialized training to 1.1 million citizens for start-ups, college students and those who had difficulty finding a job.

In 2017, government-organized occupational education programs covered 1.26 million people in Kashi and Hotan, where 47,000 poor people found jobs in the same period.

A total of 317,400 people and 331 villages were lifted out of poverty in 2017, the regional poverty alleviation and development office was quoted by Xinhua News Agency as saying in July.