A mile down the road, Uighur villagers sat on stools in front of half-built brick homes as the wind blew trash down unpaved streets. Men used donkey carts to carry farm tools into the fields. “We don’t have enough land,” complained Alim Pulat, the vice chief of Lianmuqing village. Families are dependent on middlemen traders to get their crops to customers in big cities.

With fields expanding and middlemen able to reach more areas, boosting supply, prices have dropped by as much as half since 2003. But the expansion of the roads and the electricity grid has produced several local factories —a heating plant, a copper smelter—and they have provided jobs for local people, boosting incomes.

“It’s a little better than years past,” Alim said. “We can eat. We have clothes to wear.” He shrugged when asked about the fairness of the Han getting more benefits from development: “It is more convenient for Han to do business with one another.”