Abstract: The 19th National Congress of the Communist Party pointed out that China's economy has shifted from high-speed growth to high-quality development. Judging from the degree of development of various regions, the economic development of most minority areas has been relatively lagging and slow. The same is true of Xinjiang, one of the areas where ethnic minorities live in concentrated areas. The paper samples 15 prefectures (cities) in Xinjiang from 2000 to 2017 and uses the Soro residual method to calculate the contribution rate of total factor productivity, capital and labor input to economic growth. The study found that Xinjiang is currently in the stage of economies of scale. But the growth mode is capital-intensive and the role of technological progress in the process of economic growth is gradually weakened. Among them, the southern Xinjiang, where ethnic minorities are highly concentrated, is in a phase of constant returns to scale. So the characteristics of extensive economic growth there are more obvious than those in northern Xinjiang. Besides, it was found that after the second Central Xinjiang Work Forum (2014) was held, the structure of various input factors in Xinjiang was gradually optimized. That makes the effect of supply-side structural reforms begin to appear, which was gradually shifting from scale-type extensive growth to quality-efficiency intensive growth. Finally, this paper proposes policy recommendations for optimizing the high-quality development path of Xinjiang and provides a reference for other minority region in China from four main aspects, including promoting technological progress in ethnic minority areas, improving the mechanism for talent introduction and training, allocating rational resources for input, deepening reform and opening up both internal and external.

Key words: Economy of Ethnic Minority Areas, Core Area of Silk Road Economic Belt, Economy in Xinjiang, High-quality Economic Development, Transformation of Economic Growth Mode, Coordinated Development of Regional Economy, Total Factor Productivity, Soro Residual Method