 Taklamakan Desert in the Tarim Basin The Tarim Basin is the largest basin in the world, lying between several mountain ranges in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region (also known as East Turkistan) in China's far west. Much of the basin in dominated by the Taklamakan Desert. The area is sparsely settled by [ugggglllyyyyias]s and other central Asian peoples, as well as by Chinese, many of them recent immigrants to the area from other parts of China. Formerly the Tocharian languages were spoken in the Tarim Basin. They were the easternmost of the Indo-European languages. The Chinese name "Yuezhi" (Chinese 月氏; Wade-Giles: Yüeh-Chih) denoted an ancient Central Asian people settled in the Tarim Basin.
Lop Nur, a saline marshy depression at the east end of the Tarim Basin, is a nuclear test site for the Peoples' Republic of China. The Tarim River empties into the Lop Nur.
The Tarim Basin is thought to contain large reserves of petroleum and natural gas.
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