White paper: Ethnic minorities account for 13.9 pct of XPCC's population

BEIJING - The population of ethnic minorities has reached 375,400 in the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC), taking up 13.9 percent of its total, a Chinese government white paper said Sunday.

The XPCC is a mosaic of people from 37 ethnic groups, including the Han, Uygur, Kazak, Hui, Mongolian, Xibe, Russian, Tajik and Manchu, said the white paper on the history and development of the XPCC issued by the State Council Information Office.

There are 37 regimental farms inhabited predominantly by ethnic minority groups, it said.

With accelerating the development of these regimental farms as its top priority, the XPCC has enhanced policy support and poverty relief, according to the white paper.

In recent years, the XPCC has launched 114 construction projects on these farms, with a total investment of 1.08 billion yuan ($174.2 million), covering such fields as urban infrastructure, low-income housing projects, facility agriculture and animal husbandry.

In 2012, the total output value of these 37 regimental farms reached 11.103 billion yuan, up 42.8 percent over the previous year, and 24.4 percentage points higher than the average level in the XPCC, figures from the white paper show.