The Chinese government will spend 1.875 billion yuan ($299 million) to improve irrigation systems in the heavily ethnic Uighur southern part of the violence-prone far western region of Xinjiang, state news agency Xinhua said on Saturday.
The government has increasingly turned its focus to development in southern Xinjiang in recent years, in an implicit recognition of the economic causes of some of the unrest there.
Xinjiang, a huge region bordering Central Asia, has long been a security worry for Beijing, which has led a massive clamp down after deadly bouts of ethnic violence it blames on Islamist and separatist extremists amongst the Uighur population.