HUANGPU SHANGHAI

Wu Gang, chairman of Xinjiang Goldwind Science and Technology Co, talks with an engineer at a factory of the company in August. XINHUA

The fierce gales in Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region were once considered bad for business. Today, however, the gales have become big business itself, harvested by hundreds of giant turbines and transformed into electricity to power up the country.

Also thanks to the gales, Dabancheng of Urumqi, capital of the region, has turned itself from an arid plain into a pioneer in the Chinese wind industry that has been leading the world for years.

Wu Gang, chairman of Xinjiang Goldwind Science and Technology Co, also a pioneer in the Chinese wind industry who has been elected as a delegate to the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, helped make that happen.

Wu quitted his job as a teacher back in the late 1980s to help set up Dabancheng wind farm, braving the cold and ferocious gales to measure the wind at Dabancheng.

Captivated by the idea that energy could be produced by wind, Wu joined Xinjiang Wind Energy, one of China's pioneering wind companies, in 1987. Together, Wu and their team persisted in their vision of wind power and built Dabancheng wind farm.

Wu and a group of colleagues founded Goldwind in 1998. The goal was "establishing Xinjiang as the birthplace of China's domestic wind energy industry".