Wuqi County () is a

county A county is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposesChambers Dictionary, L. Brookes (ed.), 2005, Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, Edinburgh in certain modern nations. The term is derived from the Old French ...

under the jurisdiction of

Yan'an Yan'an (; ), alternatively spelled as Yenan is a prefecture-level city in the Shaanbei region of Shaanxi province, China, bordering Shanxi to the east and Gansu to the west. It administers several counties, including Zhidan (formerly Bao'an ...

City, in the northwest of

Shaanxi Shaanxi (alternatively Shensi, see #Name, § Name) is a landlocked Provinces of China, province of China. Officially part of Northwest China, it borders the province-level divisions of Shanxi (NE, E), Henan (E), Hubei (SE), Chongqing (S), Sichu ...

Province, China, bordering

Gansu Gansu (, ; alternately romanized as Kansu) is a province in Northwest China. Its capital and largest city is Lanzhou, in the southeast part of the province. The seventh-largest administrative district by area at , Gansu lies between the Tibet ...

province to the southwest. The county spans an area of , and has a population of 145,600 as of 2012.

Administrative divisions

The county is divided into 1

subdistrict A subdistrict or sub-district is an administrative division that is generally smaller than a district. Equivalents * Administrative posts of East Timor, formerly Portuguese-language * Kelurahan, in Indonesia * Mukim, a township in Brunei, In ...

and 8

towns A town is a human settlement. Towns are generally larger than villages and smaller than cities, though the criteria to distinguish between them vary considerably in different parts of the world. Origin and use The word "town" shares an ori ...

Geography

Wuqi is adjacent to

Dingbian County Dingbian County () is a county in the northwest of Shaanxi province, China, bordering the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region to the west and Inner Mongolia to the north. It is the westernmost county-level division under the administration of Yulin C ...

in the northwest,

Zhidan County Zhidan () is a county under the administration of the prefecture-level city of Yan'an, in the northwest of Shaanxi Province, China, bordering Gansu Province to the south. The county has an area of , and a population of 141,600 as of 2012. Zhidan ...

in the southeast,

Jingbian County Jingbian County () is a county under the administration of Yulin City, in the northwest of Shaanxi Province, China, bordering Inner Mongolia to the north and northwest and flanked in the north by the Mu Us Desert. It has a land area of , and a po ...

in the northeast, and Huachi County in

Gansu Province Gansu (, ; alternately romanized as Kansu) is a province in Northwest China. Its capital and largest city is Lanzhou, in the southeast part of the province. The seventh-largest administrative district by area at , Gansu lies between the Tibeta ...

in the southwest. The county's two main rivers are the

Wuding River The Wuding River (Chinese: 无定河) begins in the Ordos Desert in Shaanxi Province, Inner Mongolia and flows south into loess canyons and farmland. After around 100 miles it flows into the great Yellow River. The Wuding has its own tributaries, ...

and the Beiluo River. The region is largely hilly, with the terrain's altitude varying from to in height.

Climate

The county has warm, wet summers, and cool, dry winters. The county's minimum recorded temperature was , maximum recorded temperature was , and has an average annual temperature of . The county's average annual precipitation is .

History

On October 19, 1935, forces belonging to the Chinese Soviet Republic captured the area. An account of Wuqi (Wu Ch'i, in Wade-Giles Romanization) in 1936 can be found in

Edgar Snow Edgar Parks Snow (19 July 1905 – 15 February 1972) was an American journalist known for his books and articles on Communism in China and the Chinese Communist revolution. He was the first Western journalist to give an account of the history of ...

's "Red Star over China". At the time, it was the main industrial center of the communist-controlled Shaanxi/

Ningxia Ningxia (,; , ; alternately romanized as Ninghsia), officially the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region (NHAR), is an autonomous region in the northwest of the People's Republic of China. Formerly a province, Ningxia was incorporated into Gansu in ...

borderlands area, This is where the

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, after ...

's arsenal. cloth, uniform, shoe and stockings factories were at the time. As Edgar Snow noted, the arsenal's products were mostly used to arm the Red guerilla fighters, while the regular Red Army units mostly used weapons captured from the enemy (

Kuomintang The Kuomintang (KMT), also referred to as the Guomindang (GMD), the Nationalist Party of China (NPC) or the Chinese Nationalist Party (CNP), is a major political party in the Republic of China, initially on the Chinese mainland and in Tai ...

and warlord) troops. The area was a part of the

Shaan-Gan-Ning Border Region Shaan–Gan–Ning or in postal romanization Shen–Kan–Ning () was a historical proto-state that was formed in 1937 by the Chinese Communist Party following the collapse of the Chinese Soviet Republic in agreement with the Kuomintang as a part ...

Economy

As of 2016, Wuqi County had a

GDP Gross domestic product (GDP) is a monetary measure of the market value of all the final goods and services produced and sold (not resold) in a specific time period by countries. Due to its complex and subjective nature this measure is ofte ...

of 10.8 billion

Renminbi The renminbi (; symbol: ¥; ISO code: CNY; abbreviation: RMB) is the official currency of the People's Republic of China and one of the world's most traded currencies, ranking as the fifth most traded currency in the world as of April 2022. ...

. The county's urban residents had a per capita

disposable income Disposable income is total personal income minus current income taxes. In national accounts definitions, personal income minus personal current taxes equals disposable personal income. Subtracting personal outlays (which includes the major c ...

of 32,883 Yuan, and its agrarian residents had one of 11,538 Yuan.

Natural resources

The county has deposits of a number of minerals, including

coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is formed when dea ...

petroleum Petroleum, also known as crude oil, or simply oil, is a naturally occurring yellowish-black liquid mixture of mainly hydrocarbons, and is found in geological formations. The name ''petroleum'' covers both naturally occurring unprocessed crud ...

, and

gypsum Gypsum is a soft sulfate mineral composed of calcium sulfate dihydrate, with the chemical formula . It is widely mined and is used as a fertilizer and as the main constituent in many forms of plaster, blackboard or sidewalk chalk, and drywall. ...

Transportation

The county is home the Yan'an-Dingbian Road. The western terminus of the

Yanwu Expressway The Yanwu Expressway (), also known as the Yan'an-Wuqi Expressway (), or the Yan'an-Zhidan-Wuqi Expressway (), or Shaanxi Provincial Expressway S16 () is an expressway in Yan'an, Shaanxi, China. The route traverses the hills of the Loess Platea ...

is located in the county.

References

County-level divisions of Shaanxi Yan'an {{Shaanxi-geo-stub