Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Thursday, March 04, 2004
China to rent 7,000 hectares of Kazak land
China is going to rent a piece of Kazak land of nearly 7,000 hectares in Ala-Kol County. The contract term will be 10 years starting from the spring of 2004. China's Yili Prefecture will send local farmers to Kazakhstan to till the land.
China is going to rent a piece of Kazak land of nearly 7,000 hectares in Ala-Kol County. The contract term will be 10 years starting from the spring of 2004. China's Yili Prefecture will send local farmers to Kazakhstan to till the land.
According to a report from Xinjiang Radio Station, the farmers to be sent out to Kazakhstan by Yili Prefecture will grow soybeans and wheat on the land. They will not only engage in agricultural development but also in the local aquaculture, construction and tourism industries. According to preliminary estimation during the contract execution process, Yili will be able to export more than 3,000 laborers.
It is said that Ala-Kol County is 170 kilometers away from Ala-Kol Mountain Pass with convenient transportation and has advantageous planting conditions. However, much of its land has been lying waste since the 1990s. By contrast, China's Yili Prefecture, which is nearby, has a large population but limited land and a lot of surplus laborers.
Sources also say that labor export from Xinjiang to Central Asia has made good impression in central Asia and the Transcaucasian region. The local people view as legends things about Chinese farmers doing farm work in Central Asian countries because the per-unit output of wheat grown by the Chinese is several times higher than the average output by the local people.