An express train departed slowly from Hohhot, capital city of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, at 10:18 a.m. on August 3, heading for Ulanqab, another city in the region.

The train, running at a speed of up to 250 km per hour, was the first high-speed train in the region and it reduced the rail journey time between the two locations from over one hour to 40 minutes.

The rail link is part of a longer line which in 2018 will extend eastward to Zhangjiakou, the co-host city of the 2022 Winter Olympics, in Hebei Province. The train was put into operation five days before the ceremony celebrating the 70th anniversary of the region's foundation. From April 23 to May 3 in 1947, under the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC), a people's congress was held in Ulanhot, Inner Mongolia, and May 1 was set as the date for the region's founding.

Inner Mongolia was the first provincial-level ethnic autonomous region established in China. The aim was to create equality, solidarity and common prosperity for all 55 ethnic groups in a total population of about 25 million people, of whom one fifth are ethnic Mongolians. The autonomous region occupies 12 percent of China's land and lies adjacent to eight other provincial regions, bordering Russia and Mongolia on the north.

"The successful example set by Inner Mongolia proves that regional ethnic autonomy is the choice suitable for China," said Yu Zhengsheng, Chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, the nation's top political advisory body, at the ceremony marking the 70th anniversary held in Hohhot on August 8.

Inner Mongolia, in the past seven decades, has developed in various areas and made great achievements. Figures from the regional government show that the its economy has expanded from 537 million yuan ($76 million) in 1947 to 1.863 trillion yuan ($266.2 billion) in 2016.

Green grassland

Many people think of Inner Mongolia as a vast grassland dotted with snow-white yurts and galloping horses.

This is not the full picture of the autonomous region, at least for Yin Yuzhen, a Shaanxi local who has been living in Inner Mongolia for more than 30 years. Her experience in the region is just the opposite: a vast expansion of desert as well as the desperation and isolation of living in it, where sandstorms could last for 40 days.

Yet together with her husband, the couple has converted parts of the Mu Us Desert, their isolated home, into a green zone. Yin's idea of planting trees to improve her living conditions eventually paid off, despite much trial and error. The couple spent their savings and bought 600 saplings, among which only about 100 survived in the end. Now 32 years later, trees planted by the couple cover an area of more than 70,000 mu  (4,667 hectares), and many people have followed suit to create a swathe of green.

"Trees for me were the only hope, even though the prospects were quite dim," said Yin. Elion Resources Group Ltd., a company founded in 1988 in Inner Mongolia with the aim of ecological restoration and new energy exploration, has also spent decades tackling desertification and has made remarkable progress in Hobq Desert in Ordos, Inner Mongolia.

Over the past 29 years, the area of desertification eliminated by Elion has reached 10,000 square km, and another 6,000 square km have been transformed into regular land.

"Now the sandy weather in Hobq has decreased by 95 percent, and more than 100,000 locals have been lifted out of poverty," Wang Wenbiao, President of Elion, told China Land and Resources News. "Compared with 1988, the rainfall here has increased six-fold."

"Desertification is not just a project for ecological restoration; it can also help people in poverty live a better life," said Wang.

Since a visit to Inner Mongolia in 2014 by President Xi Jinping, Inner Mongolia's ecological protection has been fast tracked, with more efforts in desert control, grassland protection and water and soil preservation. Since 2011, the state has provided subsidies for ecological protection, which had amounted to 30 billion yuan ($4.29 billion) by 2016.

Now, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region has 182 nature reserves and 43 national forest parks.

Rich resources

The region is rich in resources, which were heavily relied on in the past to develop its economy. Today it is the major power supplier for China's west-to-east and north-to-south power transmission programs, a leading producer of iron and steel, and the region is China's biggest domestic dairy product supplier, producing 7.3 million tons of milk last year. It also has the largest output of mutton, fine wool and cashmere wool in the country. In the past three years, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region has made significant progress in industrial restructuring. The proportion of coal-related industries dropped to 22 percent in 2016, compared with 34 percent in 2011.

Now, the over-reliance on natural resources for development in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region has changed, and various alternative industries, like developing a world class big data and cloud computing industry, have boomed in recent years.

"The output of the region's big data industry is expected to surpass 100 billion yuan ($15 billion) by 2020," said Bu Xiaolin, Chairwoman of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. In addition, tourism, increasing annually by over 20 percent on average, made the economy grow by an average of 7.9 percent each year from 2013 to 2016. Mongolians were traditionally referred to as "people who live on horseback" since they led a semi-nomadic pastoral lifestyle on grasslands. Now, modern technologies have also been adopted in many industries including livestock farming.

Many animals have been fitted with GPS collars to enable herdsmen to accurately locate them via computers or smartphones. Watering systems, which automatically maintain a certain level of water to ensure adequate supply for herds, have also been adopted in many areas in the region.

Since 2012, a total of 1.41 million people have been lifted out of poverty, and basic medical insurance now covers 98 percent of the combined urban and rural population. Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region's urbanization rate has surpassed 60 percent.

Belt and Road

Manzhouli, located at the eastern junction of the borders between China, Russia and Mongolia, which has a population of 300,000, is a century-old inland port city known as the "window of East Asia" in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. It witnessed the boom of the early Chinese gold miners in Russia in the 1980s. Recently, it has been undergoing robust development, especially since the Belt and Road Initiative was proposed in 2013.

The China-Mongolia-Russia Economic Corridor (CMREC), initiated in September 2014 during the first trilateral meeting of the heads of state of the three nations in Tajikistan, became the first multilateral cooperation plan to become part of the Belt and Road Initiative.

Now, Manzhouli is linked to 28 international destinations by freight trains, and nearly 70 percent of trade between China and Russia passes through the port. In the first seven months of this year, 747 freight trains passed through Manzhouli carrying goods worth $3.15 billion, 25 percent more than those trans-shipped in the same period last year.

"We are integrating our plans with the Belt and Road development. We are of crucial importance to the northward opening up of Inner Mongolia," Mayor of Manzhouli Xu Ailian told Xinhua News Agency.