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Electricity now lights life in western regions
(China Daily)
Updated: 2004-04-02 01:18 Dui Shanbai, a 60-year-old Kazak herdsman, has
gone electric.
He's given up his old oil fires while watching his flock in the pastures of
Beitashan in Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, and is now
another Chinese electricity "consumer."
"At last we have it...Now we can watch TV programmes," said Dui Shanbai,
imagining his better future.
The Kazak farmer and his family are among more than 600 Kazak herdsmen
households who are now beneficiaries of a government programme to provide
electricity for township dwellers in seven provinces and autonomous regions in
the western part of China.
Statistics show that at the end of 2001, there were about 30 million minority
ethnic people in the seven provinces and autonomous regions, including Tibet,
Sichuan, Qinghai and Xinjiang, who routinely lived in candle or fire light at
night due to lack of conventional power coverage.
In Xinjiang, an ethnic population of 300,000 in more than 50 townships have
long lived without electricity, using only wood, coal and dried dung as fuel for
cooking and warming. The result was devastation of the ecology and
underdevelopment of the region.
To provide electricity, the State Development and Reform Commission began a
programme to make use of abundant solar, wind and water resources in the region.
With state-of-the-art technologies, it involves construction of solar and
wind-driven power stations and small-scale hydropower projects.
Under the programme, a 150-kilowatt solar station, so far the largest of its
kind in China, was built in Beitashan, where Dui Shanbai lives.
Prior to the 120-million-yuan (US$14.46 million) project, a similar
100-kilowatt station was launched in Amdo County, Tibet.
Like Dui Shanbai, more than 100,000 Tibetan herdsman are benefiting from the
project, with nearly 100 solar stations now operating on the Qinghai-Tibet
Plateau.
The 60-year-old Tibetan herdsman Goisang says. "In the past we burned butter,
but now we fire the Sun."
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