From Nation, issue no.376, July 14, 2008|
Translated by Liang Duo
Original article: [Chinese]

Yulin has all the air of a rural township - a small, crowded town layout, ubiquitous flat-roof houses, and dry and dusty desert weather.

One would be surprised to discover that this city of 3.5 million actually sits upon enormous pockets of wealth in the form of natural resources.

Yet, like many such resource-reliant cities in China, Yulin remains a place marked by both its nuveau-riche and struggling poor, symbols of the city's wide wealth gap.

The Place to Make Money
Twenty-year-old Liu Qing went to bed after 5am every morning only to get up six hours later. She left her home in Shaanxi's Hanzhong about three years ago, and now works at a massage parlour in downtown Yulin.

Through thick-layers of make-up, she appeared older than her real age. She summed up her goal in Yulin as: "Make money, get to know more people, and start afresh in another city."

She added: "This place may look like a village but it is a good place to make money. There are lots of rich people around here, you cannot tell by their appreance. They may look sloppy, yet when they spend, the tips alone run into hundreds of yuan."

Liu earned on average some 4,000 yuan a month for laboring more than ten hours a day, and nearly 80% of her income came from commissions and tips.

Liu revealed that there were many massage centers like her's in Yulin. By nightfall, the streets were deserted.
Outlets like Liu's would glow with pink lighting, drawing in coal mine bosses and usury businessmen.

"In Yulin, two places - Shenmu and Fugu - had the most number of rich people, all of whom owned coal mines. Beautiful girls have all gone there to work, I heard they could earn up to 7,000 yuan a month," she said.

Trillions of Wealth
Thanks to natural resources like coal, oil and gas, Yulin had undergone steady economic growth for the last decade, after large-scale mine exploration and development took place in the 1980s.

Located in the northern tip of Shaanxi province, Yulin borders four other provinces - Shanxi, Gansu, Ningxia, and Inner Mongolia. It is called the "Chinese Kuwait" for its plentiful coal and natural gas fields.

Based on reserves statistics, every square kilometer of land there covered an average of 6.22 million tons of coal, 14,000 tons of oil, 100 million cubic meters of natural gas, and 140 million tons of rock salt.

To date, a total of 48 types of minerals under eight different categories have been found in Yulin. Coal reserves in the Shenfu county alone ranked the seven largest in the world; natural gas was estimated to exceed 5 trillion cubic meters with 747.4 billion cubic meters identified, and that was the biggest gas field ever found in China. As for oil, the reserves were estimated to exceed 1.1 billion tons with 300 million tons identified.

In addition, the rock salt reserves were estimated to reach 6 trillion tons, or make up some 26% of the total national reserves for such minerals. Yulin is also rich in lake salt, kaoline, bauxite, limestone, and quartz sand.

Accoding to the 2007 Working Report by Yulin Treasury, its financial revenue reached 5.01 billion yuan last year, an inrcrease of 40.6% compared to the 1.45 billion yuan in revenue for 2006. Non-tax revenue had also increased by 6.9% compared with last year.

Yulin Treasury Bureau's secretariat head Ma Yongfeng said the resource-rich Yulin still had many resources left, which he estimated to be worth 40 trillion yuan, adding that it would be important for quenching China's thirst for raw materials in the future.

Rich Treasury, Poor People
Though the city's economy had benefited from the resources, the development of public amenities and cultural facilities remained sub-par, according to it's treasury department budget office head Zhu.

Zhu said that although Yulin was among the top five wealthy regions in Shaanxi province, its wealth distribution was greatly imbalanced, with rural residents still poor. For instance, 12 counties, including the "prospering" Fugu, were classified as poverty areas.

Based on official statistics for 2007, the disposable income of Yulin's urban dwellers were 8,850 yuan, nearly triple that of rural residents, whose per capital income stood at 2,621.

Odd-job worker Zhao Qiang and his wife lived in a 40-square meter room. When they failed to secure stable income here and there, their monthly living expenses depended solely on the 300-yuan government subsidy for lower income groups.

"I doubt this city will ever see high rises coming up. Yulin is a mountaineous region and susceptible to landslides during rainy season, how could high rises be built here? The hardware of this city hasn't change much, still lots of flat-roof houses and shanty towns," said Zhao.

Changes may be on the way though. As the local treasury became increasingly well-off, various projects have been lined up for a facelift for Yulin.

The local government has appropriated 37.3 million yuan for redevelopment, including the construction of a new Yulin theater, conservation of the Hongyan Gorge, restoration of city wall and the removal of shanty towns, construction of a radio and television center, and a swimming stadium.

In addition, the city is looking forward to a brand new commercial center, to be built over the next six years and involving some 18 billion yuan in investment.