Northwest China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region has been a multiethnic region and in close contact with the Central Plains since ancient times, a white paper said Sunday.

Large numbers of various ethnic groups entering Xinjiang in different periods brought technology, culture and ideas, folk customs, and many other aspects of their lives into the region, promoting economic and social development through exchanges and integration, according to the white paper titled "Historical Matters Concerning Xinjiang," which was released by the State Council Information Office.

Ethnic groups had grown, developed and integrated with each other despite periods of isolations and conflict, and shared good fortune and hardship in a close relationship, it said.

All of them have made important contribution to exploring, developing and protecting Xinjiang, and they are all masters of Xinjiang, it added.

"The ethnic groups of China, including those in Xinjiang, live together alongside each other. They are economically interdependent and embrace each other's culture, and are a unified whole that has become impossible to separate. They are members of the same big family," the white paper said.