On October 25, 1958, the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region was formally established, and Yinchuan was made its capital. It was the fourth of the five autonomous regions set up under the system of regional autonomy for minority nationalities, after Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang and Guangxi and before Tibet, and it was created by combining the old province of Ningxia with an area of Gansu that had a large Hui population. The region is smaller than most provinces, at about 66,000 square kilometres.
The Hui are a Chinese speaking Muslim people, and the region is the only one in the country set up for them. The policy behind the autonomous regions was set out in the 1950s in a series of decisions and in the constitution, which gives them a measure of self government in local affairs and the use of their own languages in administration and schools. The policy was new. A regional congress and government were elected, and Hui officials were appointed to senior posts, and the region sends deputies to the national legislature.
Modern farming came with irrigation. The region is dry and depends on the Yellow river, which runs through its north, and a system of canals has been built and extended since the 1950s, and the land produces rice, wheat and fruit, and the irrigation scheme at Qingtongxia was a large project of the early period. The land is dry. Coal is mined in the north, and the region holds a large share of the country's coal reserves, and there are chemical and power plants, and in recent decades vineyards and solar and wind power have grown.
The population is about 7 million, of which the Hui are roughly a third and the rest are Han and other groups, and the region has a university and a network of schools that teach in Chinese and in some cases in the local languages. Its capital, Yinchuan, is on the Yellow river and is one of the larger cities of the north west, and the founding date is marked each year. The region grew.