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Urumqi History, China

The town of Urumqi or is commonly known as Dihua is the capital city of the autonomous region of Xianjiang Uyghur of the China People ’s Republic at the northwest side of the state. Urumqi has a total average elevation of around 800 meters. It is considered as the biggest town of the half western of People’s Republic of China.

Urumqi has been a significant city at the Northern route of Silk Road, 2,000 years ago. The Silk Road is a huge network for trade routes that facilitates the cultural exchanges all over Eurisia.

During the twenty-second year under the supremacy of Tang Dynasty in 648 AD, the Luntai town has been built in the old city seat of the Urabo, ten kilometers from southern suburb of the current day Urumqi.

The old town of the Luntai was a place of the local government that collects taxes to the caravans next to the northern course of Silk Road. By the time of Qing Dynasty in 1763 AD, Qianlong, an emperor, named the extended city as Luntai or Dihua, which means “to enlighten”.

Emperor Guang Xu has established the Province of Xinjiang in year 1884 and made Dihua as the capital place of the province. Subsequent to the foundation of the China People’s Republic dated February 1, 1954, the town has again took the name Urumqi that means “Beautiful pasture” taken from language of the Mongolian of Junggar tribe.

Urumqi comprises seven districts and one county. Based on the census results of 2002, the town has 2,081,834 inhabitants with 174.53 inhabitants per km2 population density. From these, 75 percent of the population is inhabited with Han Chinese, 12.8 percent are Uyghurs, 2.3 percent are Kyrgyz and Kazakhs and 8.0 percent are Hui.

Urumqi is the main industrial center in Xinjiang. Along with Bayin’gholin and Karamay, Urumqi has a total account of 64.5 percent industrial outputs for Xinjiang. With 32.2 billion sales of goods on 2007, Urumqi now is considered as the biggest customer center to its Region. The sales have increase by 18.24 percent from year 2006. In addition, the per capita for GDP has exceeded up to 4,000 US dollars by year 2007.

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