????In the 5th session of the 12th national people’s congress held recently, Maimaitiibrym Maimaitimin from Cele county of Hetian region of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region gave high appraisal of partnering with Qingdao city of Shandong province in his work report.

????“In these years many Qingdao companies provided many job opportunities to us in Hetian. At the same time they teach and help us in new technologies of planting vegetables,” Maimaitimin said in an interview with Qingdao media on 13th March: ”After they came, farmers who plant vegetables in Hetian own more money, and live a better life.”

????Since 2011, besides providing donations to Xinjiang for its projects such as housing/education/healthcare through Shandong province, Qingdao also implemented over 20 large-scale economic cooperation projects in total in Xinjiang, with over CNY 1.5 billion total investment. Qingdao helps Xinjjiang in new ways, namely turning to multi-cooperation from single-direction help, turning to blood-generation mode from blood-donation mode, turning to social assistance to government-dominated assistance.

????Pigment pepper is a reflection of helping Xinjiang by Qingdao with industry. According to statistics, pepper products from Jiaozhou of Qingdao enjoy 70% of all market shares, and its largest high quality product resource is Xinjiang. Pepper planting area in Xinjiang is over 600,000mu, with an annual production of about 0.3 million tons, 70% of them are purchased by Jiaozhou enterprises. Pepper purchase value exceeds CNY 2 billion each year.

????49-year-old Jiaozhou businessman Fu Jun promotes pepper planting and purchase in Xinjiang since 1997, and in the past 20 years, he spent over half time in Xinjiang every year. According to planting contract signed by Fu Jun and villagers, the bottom purchase price is about CNY 8 per gram, and the actual purchase prices depend on actual condition – if market price is higher than contracted price, pepper will be purchased in market price, if lower, it will be purchased in contracted price. It guarantees the maximum benefits of the villagers. Fu not only offers whole-process tech guidance, but also provides subsidies to villagers, such as seeds and fertilizer. Purchased pepper will be transported back to Jiaozhou factories for extracting pigment and pepper oil for export.

????Fu said in an interview with the Qingdao media on morning of 13th March that on that day he has signed over 1,000mu planting contract with Tuzilukekash village of Kumukusaer county of Maigaiti county of Kashi, nearly 1/5 of all planting area. Generally all households in the village participate in the planting. Fu said, in the past the villagers usually plant wheat, corn or cotton, the highest income was CNY 1,000 per mu, the number that is steady can be as high as CNY 2,000 after planting pepper.

????Fu said besides tbe Kashi area as the partnering area of Shandong, Hetian also has high quality ore, jade, and yam resources. He suggested more enterprises to invest in Xinjiang to bring more good projects for Xinjiang residents to improve theirlife. (Xiao Fang/Song Tao) [1. Maimaitiibrym Maimaitimin; 2. Liu Songbo showed pepper grain purchased from Xinjiang]