Xinjiang county expands equine industry focus

    Snow settles at the foot of the western Tianshan Mountains until a herder lifts his whip and the silence gives way to motion: a line of horses surges forward, hooves striking powder into white mist. In Zhaosu, a remote county in the Ili River Valley in China's far northwestern Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, winter brings a spectacle locals call "heavenly horses treading snow" — an image that looks ancient, but the economics behind it are not.

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