Despite being at the heart of controversy over "arbitrary and discriminatory detention" of the Uighur population and other mostly-Muslim ethnic groups, China’s Xinjiang region has reportedly witnessed a rapid economic and social development over the years.
The state-run CGTN news outlet says that per capita GDP in Xinjiang, an autonomous territory in northwest China, soared by 241 yuan in 1955 to 53,593 yuan in 2020 – a whopping 30-fold rise at constant prices.
Citing a platform called “Respecting and Protecting the Rights of All Ethnic Groups in Xinjiang,” the media outlet states that, during the same period, Xinjiang increased to 1.3 trillion yuan from 1.2 billion yuan. That’s an increase of about 160 times at constant prices.
Constant prices are a way of measuring the real change in output. A year is chosen as the base year. For any subsequent year, the output is measured using the price level of the base year. This excludes any nominal change in output and enables a comparison of the actual goods and services produced.
From 1978 to 2020, the per capita disposable income of urban residents there rose from 319 yuan to 34,838 yuan. The figure for rural Xinjiang residents leapt to 14,056 yuan from 119 yuan over the period.
Disposable income is the amount of money that an individual or household has to spend or save after income taxes have been deducted, the report says. For both rural and urban dwellers, the per capita disposable income saw a staggering 100% hike.