Wensu County


Wensu County, also known as Onsu County, is a county in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of China, under the administration of Aksu Prefecture, bordering Kyrgyzstan's Issyk-Kul Region to the northwest. It has an area of.

Etymology

The toponym Wensu had appeared in historical records of the Western Han Dynasty as one of the 36 states in the Western Regions. The name 'Onsu' means "ten rivers" in Uyghur and other Turkic languages. The name is similar to that of the nearby Zhetysu region which means "seven rivers"- both names consist of a number followed by 'su'. The name Aksu is Turkic for 'white water'.
In Uyghur, the county is called Aksu Konaxahar meaning 'the old city of Aksu'.

History

Wensu County was established in 1902.
On May 29, 1958, Wensu County was eliminated and its territory made part of Aksu County. In 1962, Wensu County was restored.
In a Radio Free Asia interview, a Han Chinese staffer in the Wensu County local government said that in July 2017, a policy to affix QR codes to all knives belonging to Uyghurs was being carried out.
As of March 2018, every cadre in the county was required to spend eight days a month at the home of villagers.
In the late 2010s, Wensu County was the site of vocational education and training centers. According to a Radio Free Asia interview with an officer at the Wensu county police station, as of August 2018, 30,000 persons, or about one in six Uyghurs in the county, were detained in re-education camps.

Administrative divisions

Wensu County administered 8 towns, 4 townships, and 1 ethnic township.

Climate

Economy

Agricultural products include rice, wheat, corn, cotton and fruit products. Sheep wool and sheepskins are produced in abundance. Industries produce food, spun cotton, building materials and coal.
, there was about 139,200 acres of cultivated land in Onsu.

Demographics

As of 2015, 197,360 of the 259,305 residents of the county were Uyghur, 55,335 were Han Chinese and 6,610 were from other ethnic groups.
As of 1999, 76.17% of the population of Wensu County was Uyghur and 21.43% of the population was Han Chinese.

Transportation

Historical English-language maps including Onsu: