Ulugqat County

Ulugqat County (also known as Ulughchat County and Wuqia County; Chinese: 乌恰县; pinyin: Wūqià Xiàn) is a county in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, China. It is under the administration of the Kyrgyz autonomous prefecture of Kizilsu. The county has two towns, nine townships and one state-owned farm, eight communities and 34 villages under its jurisdiction in 2017, its county seat is Wuqia Town. It contains an area of 19,118.11 km² (7,381.54 sq mi) and has a population of 56,633 (as of 2017) with main ethnic groups of Kyrgyz, Han and Uyghur peoples.

Wuqia County is one of the two westernmost counties in China. It borders with Artux City to the east, Kashgar City to the south, Akto County to the southwest and the Kyrgyz Republic to the northwest. There are two national-level ports of Turugart (吐尔尕特口岸) and Arkaxtam (伊尔克什坦口岸), which are the link between Central and Western Asia and the bridgehead of opening up to the outside world. The county has harsh natural conditions, dry climate, earthquakes, floods, snow storms, sandstorms and other frequent natural disasters. From 1905 to the present, there have been 56 recorded earthquakes with a major earthquake of magnitude 6.0 M_w  or above, and more than 20,000 earthquakes of magnitude below 6.0 M_w .

There are 11 local ethnic groups in the county, such as Kyrgyz, Han, Uyghur, Hui, Uzbek, Tajik, etc. and the Kyrgyz ethnic group accounts for about 80% of the total population of the county. Its total land area of the county is 19,118 square kilometers with an average elevation of 2,890 meters and its county seat is at 2,200 meters above sea level. Of which, mountains, Gobi and wasteland account for 99.8% of the total area; the total area of desert grassland is more than 10,667 square kilometers, arable land is 23,000 mu (1,533 hectares), per capita arable land is less than 0.5 mu (0.0333 ha) (333 square meters). It is a typical plateau animal husbandry county with traditional animal husbandry as the main county.