Posted on 7-8-2003

China's Future - Sand
by Alan Marston

Government officials in China are admitting its deserts are growing and are now seven times as big as Britain.

The official Xinhua news agency says nearly 20% of the country is now desert. Scientists say industrial growth over the last 20 years is to blame. The State Forestry Administration admits the problem will continue to get worse until 2010.

The news agency says the nearest sand dune is now less than 100 miles from Beijing and getting closer.

Xinhua said: "Nearly 20% of China's land territory has turned to desert because of natural and human factors, and overall desertification keeps on worsening, according to the national forestry authority." Zhou Shengxian, director of the State Forestry Administration said: "The overall situation of desertification is still worsening in China, even though in some areas it has been under control." He added: "China aims to control the expansion of desert land by the year 2010, and to establish a shelter ecosystem in desert areas by 2050."

Anti-desertification projects include the building of a forest belt around deserts and a tree-planting campaign, known as the Great Green Wall which is meant to shelter Beijing from sandstorms.

Postscript: Two years after this article, the situation is much worse. All countries that have bought into unrestrained industrialism have punished the earth beyond its ability to repair itself. China is the biggest country in the world in terms of population, the environmental costs of its no-holds-barred money fever will be correspondingly the biggest the world has ever seen, too big to contain within human-made paper borders.

The global economy has arrived, with its shadow.