Qinggil County (

Uyghur Uyghur may refer to: * Uyghurs, a Turkic ethnic group living in Eastern and Central Asia (West China) ** Uyghur language, a Turkic language spoken primarily by the Uyghurs *** Old Uyghur language, a different Turkic language spoken in the Uyghur K ...

), also Chinggil County, Qinghe County, is a county of

Altay Prefecture Altay Prefecture is located in Northern Xinjiang, People's Republic of China. It has an area of and a population of 561,667 (2000). It is a part of the Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture. As of the 2000 census, Altay was the only major subdivisi ...

in northeastern

Xinjiang Xinjiang,; , SASM/GNC romanization, SASM/GNC: Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Sinkiang, officially the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR), is an Autonomous regions of China, autonomous region of the China, People' ...

, China, bordering

Bayan-Ölgii Province Bayan-Ölgii ( ) is the westernmost of the 21 Aimags of Mongolia, aimags (provinces) of Mongolia. The country's only Islam in Mongolia, Muslim and Kazakh people, Kazakh-majority aimag, it was established in August 1940. Its capital is Ölgii (cit ...

and

Khovd Province Khovd (; ), alternatively romanized as Khobhd, is one of the 21 aimags (provinces) of Mongolia, located in the west of the country. Its capital is also named Khovd. Khovd province is approximately 1,580 km from Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia's cap ...

Mongolia Mongolia is a landlocked country in East Asia, bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south and southeast. It covers an area of , with a population of 3.5 million, making it the world's List of countries and dependencies by po ...

to the east. It has an area of with a population of 60,000. Qinghe was the site of a meteorite impact in 1898 and a Mongolian–Chinese border clash in the spring of 1944.

Name

Qinggil County is named for the Qinggil River (青格里河), a tributary of the

Ulungur River The Ulungur River / Urungu River or Urungu (, zh, c=乌伦古河, p=Wūlúngǔ hé), in its upper reaches in Mongolia known as the Bulgan River (), is a river of China and Mongolia. It rises in the Altai Mountains in western Mongolia, flows s ...

. 'Qinggil' is from Mongolian and means 'beautiful and crystal clear'.

History

In 1941/4, Qinggil County was established. In 2012, Araltobe Township was made a town.

Administrative divisions

Qinggil County is divided into 5

towns A town is a type of a human settlement, generally larger than a village but smaller than a city. The criteria for distinguishing a town vary globally, often depending on factors such as population size, economic character, administrative stat ...

, 3

townships A township is a form of human settlement or administrative subdivision. Its exact definition varies among countries. Although the term is occasionally associated with an urban area, this tends to be an exception to the rule. In Australia, Canad ...

Climate

Economy

Qinggil County has forests as well as coal and

mica Micas ( ) are a group of silicate minerals whose outstanding physical characteristic is that individual mica crystals can easily be split into fragile elastic plates. This characteristic is described as ''perfect basal cleavage''. Mica is co ...

. Industries include mining, livestock product processing, wool-spinning, leather-making and others. Animal husbandry is common.

Demographics

, 76.47% of the residents of the county were Kazakh, 18.27% were

Han Chinese The Han Chinese, alternatively the Han people, are an East Asian people, East Asian ethnic group native to Greater China. With a global population of over 1.4 billion, the Han Chinese are the list of contemporary ethnic groups, world's la ...

, and 5.26% were from other ethnic groups. As of 2015, 50,091 of the 65,290 residents of the county were Kazakh, 11,892 were

and 3,307 were from other ethnic groups. As of 1997, 75.2% of the population of Qinggil County was Kazakh.

Wildlife

The Sino-Mongolian beaver, ''Castor fiber birulai'', is found only in the basin of the Ulungur River. The population is considered endangered. The Bulgan Beaver Nature Reserve ( zh, 布尔根河河狸自然保护区; ) has been established on the Bulgan River (a tributary of the Ulungur River) in Qinggil (Qinghe) County in 1980 to protect the creatures.

Notes

References

External links

*
Official website of Qinggil County government
{{Authority control County-level divisions of Xinjiang Altay Prefecture