Turn Xinjiang’s problems into innovative topics

Chapter of youth, Xinjiang can be expected | Turning Xinjiang’s problems into innovative topics

China Youth Network, Beijing, November 11 (Reporter Mou Haokun, intern Zong Yu) 0.1 mm, which is the thickness of a piece of A4 paper. It is also the scale that He Cheng, a senior engineer at the Inspection and Testing Center of the State Grid Xinjiang Electric Power Research Institute, has "compared with the grid materials for 30 years"; the extreme temperature difference from minus 40 degrees Celsius to above zero 80 degrees Celsius is the senior manager and engineer of the Science and Technology Quality Department of China Construction Xinjiang Construction Engineering Civil Engineering Co., Ltd. The daily routine that Ipariya Abduwili had to "walk through" at the construction site of Urumqi Tianshan International Airport; Karamay, which is more than 20 degrees below zero, and the series of site selection footprints in the snow are the starting point for Chen Xiangyu, deputy director of the New Energy Research Institute of the Oil Production Technology Research Institute of China Petroleum Xinjiang Oilfield Company, from a "layman" to a leader in new energy projects.

He Cheng (second from left), Ipariya Abdulwili (third from left) and Chen Xiangyu (first from right) are sharing and communicating with the host. Photo provided by the organizer

Recently, the 2026 "Youth Chapter, Xinjiang can be expected" ideological and political course online theme activity was launched at the Boda Campus of Xinjiang University Urumqi Campus. The event is guided by the Network Communication Bureau of the Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission, hosted by the Autonomous Region Party Committee Cyberspace Affairs Office, the Autonomous Region Education Department, the Autonomous Region Youth League Committee, the Autonomous Region Social Science Federation, and Xinjiang University, hosted by China Youth Network, and supported by the China Internet Development Foundation. In the "Tianshan Renewal" chapter of the event, three scientific and technological workers working on the front lines of Xinjiang's energy, infrastructure, and oil fields shared the stage. Their stories have one thing in common: Xinjiang poses questions, they answer them, and they answer every question as "the first in the industry."

What are the "real" things? To put it bluntly, they are very small - bolts, hardware, and "iron lumps" on the power grid. In 2023, a UHV converter station discovered that the flange bolts of a lightning rod had fallen off. He looked at photos of the fracture and concluded that other bolts on the same flange must have also cracked. After an overnight investigation, it was found that all the flange bolts at the bottom of the 50-meter-high lightning rod had indeed cracked, and could collapse at any time and damage the surrounding main equipment. One judgment prevented a major equipment accident. Another time, before a new line was put into operation, several anti-vibration hammer hardware fell off, and the operation and maintenance unit came all the way to ask for help. He used a microscope to "strip out the cocoon" bit by bit, and within an hour, he found a 0.1 mm wide crack in the steel strand with a diameter of only 1.5 mm, avoiding a loss of more than 20 million yuan. 0.1 mm, but the thickness of a piece of A4 paper. "Xinjiang's sandstorms, temperature differences, and severe cold are all difficult to survive with this 0.1 millimeter, so I will fight with it for the rest of my life."

In the past 30 years, He Cheng's team has traveled more than 3 million kilometers, visited more than 2,000 power engineering sites across Xinjiang, and completed nearly one million pieces of equipment and material inspections. The inspected network equipment has been put into operation with zero defects and zero failures. Faced with the problem of "more than half of the hardware that should have been used for 30 years was worn out in less than half a year" in the Baili Wind Zone, which has no domestic standards and no experience, they traveled all over the wind zone and conducted millions of wear tests. They increased the wear resistance of the hardware by 5 times and reduced the replacement cost by 60%. The developed ultrasonic phased array inspection system for hardware increased the on-site inspection efficiency by more than 5 times, and the relevant methods were incorporated into industry standards.

The extreme temperature difference from minus 40 degrees Celsius to above zero 80 degrees Celsius is the "reality" that Ipariya Abdulwili wants to compare. In the Urumqi Tianshan International Airport project, the temperature difference between day and night caused the steel structure bridge connections to be easily damaged and the bridge deck to crack. She and her team continued to study and try repeatedly, using new construction methods, reinforcement technologies and high-quality road materials, and finally achieved extremely high bridge installation accuracy. This technology has reached the international advanced level. The most core achievement in her heart is "teaching and mentoring" - the studio has led young people to produce 70 national-level and 20 provincial-level achievements, 2 of which have reached the international advanced level, and many technologies have been used in key projects in the autonomous region. A classmate asked: "The conditions on the construction site are difficult, and girls do engineering research. Do you ever regret it?" She replied: "Compared with the harsh environment, what attracts me more are the real engineering problems. Gender has never been a threshold. If you dare to delve into it, you will have the opportunity to hand over the answer."

Chen Xiangyu's "turn around" is even more dramatic. In 2019, this girl from Jiangnan, who graduated from Zhejiang University majoring in refrigeration and cryogenic engineering, came to the Xinjiang oil field to report. She knew almost nothing about oil extraction, and she didn’t even know that an oil pumping unit was called a "kowtow machine." In 2020, there were only 7 people in the research office, and she, the youngest, took the initiative to take over the company's first feasibility study plan for thin oil photothermal utilization. In January and February of that year, when the temperature was more than 20 degrees below zero in Karamay, she visited more than a dozen stations to select sites. Then, during the three-month countdown, she called solar thermal companies for several hours during the day to ask for advice. She taught herself solar thermal knowledge at night and built a solution model with more than a dozen sub-tables and thousands of rows of data. After more than two months of continuous work, the plan was come up, and the "layman" was re-recognized. Later, the team built the industry's first super-heavy oil thermal lighting and thermal utilization demonstration project - on December 12, 2025, the world's first 110 kV solid regenerative electric steam injection boiler was officially put into operation, with green electricity accounting for more than 50%. The "Guangqi New Energy" Youth Innovation Studio where she works has set an iron rule of "not letting problems stay overnight". Biomass blending has been applied on a large scale in 8 boilers, with a total of about 140,000 tons of biomass blended. When asked "Why don't you go to a new energy company in a big city?", she said: "There are many ready-made tracks in big cities, and there are many tracks in Xinjiang that allow you to 'open the way'."

At the end of the sharing, the three “problem solvers” left the invitation to the young people in the audience——

"Xinjiang's power grid is still being extended, and the channels for 'Xinjiang's power transmission' are still being widened. What we lack are young people who are willing to compete with 0.1mm." He Cheng said.

"Here you are, you will be the solver of the next difficult problem." Ipariya Abduwili said.

"The low-carbon transformation of the oil fields has just begun, and we are waiting for you to join us in 'planting the sun' in the Gobi Desert," Chen Xiangyu said.

The difficulties of the Xinjiang project lie in the unique extreme environment; the opportunities in Xinjiang are precisely hidden in this "nowhere else". At the end of the session, the entire audience counted down in unison, and the words "The Chapter of Youth, There is Hope to Come" resounded throughout the venue - the difficult problem has been solved, and the answer sheet is long.