page_title: Xinjiang
section_title: Rivers and lakes
hierarchical_section_title: Xinjiang / Geography and geology / Rivers and lakes
caption_attribution_description: English: Colourful beach on the Irtysh River in the Burqin County, Xinjiang, China. Hrvatski: Šarena plaža na rijeci Irtiš u Burqin okrugu, Xinjiang, Kina. Русский: Красочный пляж на реке Иртыш в Burqin округа Синьцзян, Китай. 中文: 色彩繽紛的海灘上，中國新疆布爾津縣額爾齊斯河。 Français&#160;: Plage colorée sur la rivière Irtych à Burqin County, Xinjiang, Chine.
context_page_description: Xinjiang, officially Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China, located in the northwest of the country. Being the largest province-level division of China and the 8th-largest country subdivision in the world, Xinjiang spans over 1.6 million km².
  Xinjiang borders the countries of Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. The rugged Karakoram, Kunlun and Tian Shan mountain ranges occupy much of Xinjiang's borders, as well as its western and southern regions. The Aksai Chin region, administered by China mostly as part of Xinjiang's Hotan Prefecture, is claimed by India. Xinjiang also borders the Tibet Autonomous Region and the provinces of Gansu and Qinghai. The most well-known route of the historical Silk Road ran through the territory from the east to its northwestern border.
  It is home to a number of ethnic groups, including the Turkic Uyghur, Kazakhs and Kyrgyz, the Han, Tibetans, Hui, Tajiks, Mongols, Russians and Xibe. More than a dozen autonomous prefectures and counties for minorities are in Xinjiang.
context_section_description: Having hot summer and low precipitation, most of Xinjiang is endorheic. Its rivers either disappear in the desert, or terminate in salt lakes (within Xinjiang itself, or in neighboring Kazakhstan), instead of running towards an ocean. The northernmost part of the region, with the Irtysh River rising in the Altai Mountains, that flows (via Kazakhstan and Russia) toward the Arctic Ocean, is the only exception. But even so, a significant part of the Irtysh's waters were artificially diverted via the Irtysh–Karamay–Ürümqi Canal to the drier regions of southern Dzungarian Basin.
   
  Elsewhere, most of Xinjiang's rivers are comparatively short streams fed by the snows of the several ranges of the Tian Shan. Once they enter the populated areas in the mountains' foothills, their waters are extensively used for irrigation, so that the river often disappears in the desert instead of reaching the lake to whose basin it nominally belongs. This is the case even with the main river of the Tarim Basin, the Tarim, which has been dammed at a number of locations along its course, and whose waters have been completely diverted before they can reach the Lop Lake. In the Dzungarian basin, a similar situation occurs with most rivers that historically flowed into Lake Manas. Some of the salt lakes, having lost much of their fresh water inflow, are now extensively use for the production of mineral salts (used e.g., in the manufacturing of potassium fertilizers); this includes the Lop Lake and the Manas Lake.
caption: Black Irtysh river in Burqin County is a famous spot for sightseeing.
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