Talk:Northern Xinjiang

Talk

Discussion for: Northern Xinjiang • View • Links • Related changes

Use this page for verification notes, disputes, and action items. Keep narrative content on the article.

Page scope

Northern Xinjiang treats the part of Xinjiang north of the Tian Shan as a cannabis growing region: the Ili valley, Bortala, Tacheng, Altay, Changji and Ürümqi. The south of Xinjiang is Southern Xinjiang. The region's growing areas are Ili Valley and Bortala.

Data verification

Record source conflicts, dating problems and sources not used here. Keep narrative content on the article.

Discussion

Why the region is on the map

Hu, Zhang and Hao (2015): Indian hemp can also be grown in northern and eastern Xinjiang, though the máyān made there is much poorer than the southern product and few people make it.
Police and border-police reports of wild stands cleared in each of the units the region is drawn on: Ürümqi (Midong, 2026), Changji (Hutubi 2025; Changji city 2022 and 2025), Tacheng (Baktu port 2023; Tacheng city 2024; Qibalagashi 2026), Altay (Jeminay 2023; Aral and Chonghuer 2026), the Ili valley (2022–2026) and Bortala (2016, 2025).
A field study of the wild cannabis of the Ili valley (Liu and colleagues, 2022), with plots at Queerpan village, Qapqal County, sampled in July 2019.
Herbarium sheets from the Bogdo Ola (Hummel, 1928), Bortala (Regel 1878; Liou 1931) and the environs of Kuldja (1876).

Growing status

The status is Active: the police reports and the field study date from 2016 to 2026 and describe plants growing at the time. Most of the reports describe wild stands that the police cleared; clearing is not a sign that growing has ended. Hu, Zhang and Hao (2015) write in the present tense that the plant can be grown in the north.

How the border is drawn

The border follows modern administrative units of Xinjiang, China, as mapped in OpenStreetMap (read 21 October 2026): the directly administered counties and cities of Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture (relation 2750980), Tacheng Prefecture (239064), Altay Prefecture (239062), Bortala Mongol Autonomous Prefecture (239457), Changji Hui Autonomous Prefecture (2752412) and Ürümqi (2752472), together with the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps units that lie in that ground: Kokdala and the 4th Division farms (7027725), Shihezi (3431881), Wujiaqu (2752471), Shuanghe (9068337), Huyanghe (11033793), Beitun (9077256) and Baiyang (15340171).
Karamay city (relation 2751491), with its Dushanzi District, is left out because none of the sources for the region names it; its ground shows as holes in the border. Turpan, Hami and the prefectures south of the Tian Shan crest are outside. The border stops at China's frontiers with Kazakhstan, Russia and Mongolia.
Ground above 4,000 m and land that ESA WorldCover 2021 maps as bare or sparsely vegetated, as snow and ice, or as open water is left out of the border. This takes out about 75,000 km² of the 382,000 km² of the units: the bare parts of the Gurbantünggüt Desert and the Junggar Gobi, the glaciers and high ground of the Tian Shan and the Altai, and lakes such as Ebi, Sayram and Ulungur. The vegetated dunes of the desert stay inside.
Check points inside the border: Ürümqi, Midong, Changji, Hutubi, Fukang, Tacheng, the Chinese side of the Baktu crossing, Jeminay, Burqin, Altay, Kuytun, Bole, Yining. Outside it: Karamay, Turpan, Korla, Aksu, Almaty, Kashgar.
Where this border meets Ili Valley, Bortala or the Tian Shan growing region across the Kazakh frontier, the two share one line.
Land cover: ESA WorldCover 2021 (version 200, 10 m), © ESA WorldCover project 2021 / Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2021) processed by ESA WorldCover consortium, licensed CC BY 4.0. Elevation: AWS Terrain Tiles (Terrarium, SRTM-based), zoom 9.

The name

The page takes the name the Xinjiang government uses for the part of the region north of the Tian Shan, northern Xinjiang (北疆, Běijiāng), the counterpart of Southern Xinjiang.

Accessions inside the border

Filed under the region: Hummel 908 (1928) and Hummel 909 (1928), from a meadow in the Losan-Go valley of the Bogdo Ola, classed as feral; and Liou 3403 (1931), from river flats near a gorge, which the Yangling duplicate calls wild and the Beijing catalogue places in Bole (also filed under Bortala).
Not filed under the region: Hummel 164 (1928), Hummel 679 (1928) and Hummel 874 (1928), from the Bogdo Ola, and Larionov 65 (1876) and Regel s.n., Bortala (1878), all classed as of unknown status. Hummel's cult. ? on number 874 is a question, not a statement that the plant was grown.
News items filed under the region: the Midong clearance of 2026 and the Qiaokuer clearance of June 2023 (Ili border detachment). The Qiaokuer station could not be placed in a county, so that item is filed under the region and not under Ili Valley.

Sources

Hu, Zhang and Hao (2015): read in full in the republication on jhak.com.
Liu and colleagues (2022): read in full in the mirror of the paper on fibercrops.com; the bibliographic details were checked against the journal's own record.
Police and press reports (2016–2026): each read in full at the address cited. Several are reposts on news portals (Sina, NetEase, Sohu); each gives the issuing police office or news outlet, named in the citation.
Xinjiang regulations of 1991 (as amended in 1997): read in the Wikisource transcription.

Where the sources disagree

Midong, 2026. The reports of 1 July 2026 do not give the day of the find; one repost dates it to 24 June 2026. The article gives the report's date.

Sources not used

A repost of the Midong report says that wild stands round Ürümqi come from seed escaped from more than two thousand years of hemp cultivation in the region. No source read supports a history of that length at Ürümqi, so the claim is left out.
A report of September 2025 of about 210,000 wild plants cleared on a line patrol (Sina, credited to the Xinjiang Legal Daily) names no place; a repost of the same month places the find at Bole, and it is used on Bortala.
A report of September 2023 of more than 20,000 plants cleared by the Kaigangou (开干沟) border police station of the Ili border detachment names no county; it is left out until the station is placed.