China creates "man-made oasis" along longest inland river

www.chinaview.cn 2007-09-15 08:59:42

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URUMQI, Sept. 15 (Xinhua) -- China has created a "man-made oasis" along its longest inland river in the arid northwest, through planting trees and grass and infusing lake water into the river with its lower reaches drying up 30 years ago.

In the past seven years, the Tarim River Administration has infused 2.3 billion cubic meters of water from lakes 300 km away into the 1,321-km river that flows along the rim of the barren Tarim Basin, a sparsely populated area about the size of Poland.

The waterway is the "mother river" feeding 43.5 square kilometers of oasis inhabited by at least 8 million people -- 80 percent of whom are Uygurs. They account for about 40 percent of the population in the Xinjiang Ugyur Autonomous Region.

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