Kashgar

Kashgar (Uyghur: قەشقەر) or Kashi (Chinese: 喀什) is a city in the Tarim Basin region of southern Xinjiang, China. It is one of the westernmost cities of China, located near the country's border with Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. For over 2,000 years, Kashgar was a strategically important oasis on the Silk Road between China, the Middle East, and Europe. It is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world and has a population of 711,300 people (as of 2019). Kashgar's urban area covers 15 km² (5.8 sq mi), although its administrative area extends over 555 km² (214 sq mi).

At the convergence point of widely varying cultures and empires, Kashgar has been under the rule of the Chinese, Turkic, Mongol and Tibetan empires. The city has also been the site of a number of battles between various groups of people on the steppes.

Now administered as a county-level city, Kashgar is the administrative centre of Kashgar Prefecture, which has an area of 162,000 km² (63,000 sq mi) and a population of approximately 4 million as of 2010. Kashgar was declared a Special Economic Zone in 2010; it is the only city in western China with this designation. Kashgar also forms a terminus of the Karakoram Highway, the reconstruction of which is considered a major part of the multibillion-dollar China–Pakistan Economic Corridor.