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Mailisha
Inner Asia 6(2004): 111-117
In recent years, sandstorms have seriously threatened Beijing, prompting the Chinese government to further acknowledge the importance of ecological issues in the ethnic minority regions. The government is now undertaking various measures to conserve the environment in minority regions. However, many ethnic minority people, instead of benefiting from the government projects, have become ecological immigrants, being forced to leave their homelands. This report, based on field research, touches on population resettlement and environmental issues in the Lianhua and Minghai Townships of the Sunan Yugur Autonomous County of Gansu Province. The area, inhabited mainly by the Yugur nomads, is located in the Gobi region of the central Hexi corridor to the north of the Qilian Shan mountains. The resettlement of the Yugur nomads to take up agricultural farming ostensibly to adjust population distribution and to solve ecological problems, has in fact accelerated environmental deterioration. This case reflects only a tip of the iceberg of the problems of ethnic minority ecological immigrants in the process of China's Western Region Development.
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