The Urumqi Economic and Technological Development zone was set up in August 1994 with approval of the State Council, becoming the first State-level development zone in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. The zone combined with the Toutunhe district, an administrative district of Urumqi, in January 2011 to incorporate the State-level development zone, administrative district, comprehensive bonded zone and several functional industrial parks into one. It is a unique economic zone in Xinjiang that has multiple functions and mixed development modes.
The Urumqi Economic and Technological Development Zone (Toutunhe District) has a planned area of 489.8 square kilometers and supervises 13 sub-districts with a population of 320,000. More than 9,000 companies have registered in the development zone, of which 43 have achieved more than 100 million yuan ($14.80 million) each in annual industrial output, 87 have paid taxes of more than 10 million yuan per year and 47 are foreign funded.
The gross domestic product of the development zone grew 7.2 percent year-on-year to 44.47 billion yuan in 2017, accounting for 15.6 percent of the total GDP of Urumqi. The fixed assets investment of the development zone surged 30.9 percent to 51 billion yuan, 25.2 percent of the city’s total. The industrial output rose 6 percent to 67.89 billion yuan, 29.8 percent of the city’s total, and import and export volume increased by 22.8 percent to $2.15 billion, 31.6 percent of Urumqi’s figure.
The zone attracted 48 new investment projects in 2018 with an aggregate investment of 56.1 billion yuan.