The new center of China’s accelerated industrial drive is remote Sinkiang Uighur Autonomous Province, a picturesque land of nomadic Muslims, claimed by China for two thousand years, under sporadic control for five hundred years, under Communist control since 1949, and established as an autonomous region in 1955. Soviet geologists proved that this region is China’s richest in strategic materials (oil, coal, uranium, wolframite, copper, zinc, molybdenum). By 1962, the total output of its industries is supposed to constitute 57.5 percent of China’s national output. Constructed in 1952, this car and tractor factory is one of four hundred steel plants, textile mills, refineries, etc., built in the region since then.