Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
might not tell you—in part because it would not occur to them in such form, in part
because the language does a poor job of expressing the concept—is that western China
remains, largely, wild. In this huge area, dominated by mountains and deserts, urbaniza-
tion and transport links are mere specks on the landscape. Unlike similarly remote arctic
North America, there are no helicopters and very little radio communication. Outside of
isolated towns, oases, and areas near rivers, people live essentially on native vegetation
as processed through the bodies of their domestic livestock, dependent on the inherent
properties of the land under their feet, largely untouched by the web of globalization and
homogenization that are hallmarks of our age.
A Perspective—Gansu and California
To put the size and importance of western China into perspective, let's take a look at Gansu,
arguably one of the least known of China's thirty-one provinces
3
both by foreigners and
by Chinese themselves. One might, with some justification, consider Gansu to be both
a cultural and political backwater, unimportant to the greater goings-on within China,
to say nothing of the world at large. And this observation would largely be correct, on a
relative scale. But to understand that scale, it is instructive to compare poor and obscure
Gansu with a more famous political entity, the U.S. state of California. California has
the third largest area of any U.S. state (trailing only Alaska and Texas), and—as has been
noted frequently by economists—were it a separate country, would have a gross domestic
product similar to that of France
4
(making it the sixth largest economy in the world).
But although Gansu is geographically much smaller than Qinghai, Xinjiang, or Inner
Mongolia, overlaying it onto a map of California reveals that humble Gansu is actually
about 12 percent larger
5
(see Figure 2.1). Gansu's Qilian Shan mountain range,
6
which
few outside China have even heard of, would also dwarf the famous Sierra Nevada moun-
tains, not only in extent (the Sierra Nevada stretches about 700 km from south to north,
whereas the Qilian Shan traces an east-west arc almost 1,000 km) but also in elevation.
The Sierra's famous Mt. Whitney, at 4,419 meters (14, 494 feet), would hardly rate as a
foothill in most of the Qilian, where numerous, mostly unnamed peaks rise to over 5,000
m, and the tallest ones exceed 5,900 m (19,350 ft).
7
Western China is relatively sparsely populated; it is remarkable for its geographic scope
and physical characteristics, not its human population. But a low-density population does
not mean that the absolute number of people living in China's west is inconsequential.
Given the geographic scale involved, even low-density habitation implies a large number
of people. It may not be surprising that the state of California, with some 35.5 million
people, has a larger population than does Gansu. But at about 26 million, Gansu is lightly
populated only by Chinese standards: it would rank second were it a U.S. state (ahead of
Texas and Florida), and it contains only about 18 percent fewer souls than all of Canada.
True, Gansu has
no glitzy urban centers to compare with California's Los Angeles, San
Diego, or San Francisco. But its capital, grimy and industrial Lanzhou, is a city of over
1.5 million (with over 3 million living in the general area), and Gansu also has eleven
other cities containing over 100,000 people.
8
Search WWH ::
Custom Search