According to the "People’s Daily", 13 types of high quality color cotton was cultivated in large quantities in Tarim Basin of East Turkistan. The new types of cotton is believed to be healthier to the human body as it requires no artificial dyeing.

Editor’s comment: The Chinese are not only squandering the oil reserves of the Tarim Basin but also trying to turn it into the cotton producing base. The fragile ecosystem of Tarim Basin is greatly endangered with the use of chemical fertilizer, irrigation with the high mineral content water and repeated cultivation of the same crop. The same ecological disaster that happened in Uzbekistan might also take place in East Turkistan. The farmers, who may increase their profits initially, are facing the danger of loosing their homeland to the desert as more and more soil become acidic and therefore increasing the speed of desertification in Tarim Basin.

19 December, People’s Newspaper