Onsu County, United States National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency () and from

Mandarin Chinese Mandarin ( ; zh, s=, t=, p=Guānhuà, l=Mandarin (bureaucrat), officials' speech) is the largest branch of the Sinitic languages. Mandarin varieties are spoken by 70 percent of all Chinese speakers over a large geographical area that stretch ...

Wensu County ( zh, s=温宿县), is a county in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and is under the administration of the

Aksu Prefecture Aksu PrefectureThe official spelling according to is located in mid-Western Xinjiang, China. It has an area of and 2.714 million inhabitants at the 2020 census whom 715,319 lived in the built-up (or metro) area made up of Aksu urban district. T ...

, bordering Kyrgyzstan's

Issyk-Kul Region Issyk-Kul (, ) is one of the regions of Kyrgyzstan. Its capital is Karakol. It is surrounded by Almaty Region, Kazakhstan to the north, Chüy Region to the west, Naryn Region to the southwest, and Xinjiang, China to the southeast. It takes ...

to the northwest. It contains an area of .

Etymology

The toponym Wensu () had appeared in historical records of the

Western Han Dynasty The Han dynasty was an imperial dynasty of China (202 BC9 AD, 25–220 AD) established by Liu Bang and ruled by the House of Liu. The dynasty was preceded by the short-lived Qin dynasty (221–206 BC) and a warring in ...

as one of the 36 states in the

Western Regions The Western Regions or Xiyu (Hsi-yü; ) was a historical name specified in Ancient Chinese chronicles between the 3rd century BC to the 8th century AD that referred to the regions west of the Yumen Pass, most often the Tarim Basin in prese ...

. The name 'Onsu' (Wensu) means "ten rivers" in Uyghur and other Turkic languages. The name is similar to that of the nearby

Zhetysu Jetisu ( ) or Semirechye ( rus, Семиречье, p=sʲɪmʲɪˈrʲetɕje) or Heptopotamia is a historical region in Central Asia corresponding to the southeastern part of modern Kazakhstan. Name Jetisu is also transcribed Jeti-Suu (, ), Zh ...

region which means "seven rivers"- both names consist of a number followed by 'su' (river; water). The name Aksu is Turkic for 'white water'. In

Uyghur Uyghur may refer to: * Uyghurs, a Turkic ethnic group living in Eastern and Central Asia (West China) ** Uyghur language, a Turkic language spoken primarily by the Uyghurs *** Old Uyghur language, a different Turkic language spoken in the Uyghur K ...

, the county is called Aksu Konaxahar () meaning 'the old city of Aksu'.

History

Onsu County was established in 1902. On May 29, 1958, Onsu County was eliminated and its territory made part of Aksu County. In 1962, Onsu County was restored. In a

Radio Free Asia Radio Free Asia (RFA) is a news service that publishes online news, information, commentary and broadcasts radio programs for its audiences in Asia. The service, which provides editorially independent reporting, has the stated mission of pro ...

interview, a Han Chinese staffer in the Onsu 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, Onsu County was the site of vocational education and training centers (also understood as re-education camps or concentration camps). According to a

interview with an officer at the Onsu county police station, as of August 2018, 30,000 persons, or about one in six Uyghurs in the county (approximately 16% of the overall population of the county), were detained in re-education camps.

Administrative divisions

Onsu County administered 8

towns A town is a type of a human settlement, generally larger than a village but smaller than a city. The criteria for distinguishing a town vary globally, often depending on factors such as population size, economic character, administrative stat ...

, 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 (919,475 '' mu'') of cultivated land in Onsu.

Demographics

As of 2015, 197,360 of the 259,305 residents of the county were

, 55,335 were

Han Chinese The Han Chinese, alternatively the Han people, are an East Asian people, East Asian ethnic group native to Greater China. With a global population of over 1.4 billion, the Han Chinese are the list of contemporary ethnic groups, world's la ...

and 6,610 were from other ethnic groups. As of 1999, 76.17% of the population of Onsu (Wensu) County was Uyghur and 21.43% of the population was Han Chinese.

Transportation

* China National Highway 314

Historical maps

Historical English-language maps including Onsu: File:A-k`o-su NK-44 (1950) - panoramio.jpg, Map including Uqturpan (labeled as WEN-SU (AKSU-KONE SHAHR)) and surrounding region from the International Map of the World ( AMS, 1950) File:Txu-pclmaps-oclc-22834566 f-6c.jpg, Map including Onsu (labeled as WENSU) ( DMA, 1981) File:Operational Navigation Chart F-6, 6th edition.jpg, From the Operational Navigation Chart; map including Onsu (labeled as WEN-SU (WENSU)) ( DMA, 1985)

Notes

References

{{Authority control County-level divisions of Xinjiang Aksu Prefecture