BEIJING, June 17 (Xinhua) -- On the western edge of the Badain Jaran Desert in northwestern China, a thriving green belt now stretches more than 50 km, forming a living shield for Jinta County against encroaching sands. It marks a stark departure from the past, when relentless dunes swallowed farmland and forced residents to retreat.
Once counted among China's most desertified counties, Jinta in Jiuquan City, Gansu Province, has been steadily reclaiming its land for over two decades. The desert and shifting sands are finally in retreat. Jinta's transformation is part of a larger national story: after decades of sustained effort, China has become the world's first country to achieve zero net growth in land degradation.
As the world marks the United Nations' World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought on Wednesday, China's decades of effort have demonstrated something fundamental -- the fight against sand is not just about planting trees, but about converting sand into income, so that ecological gains and livelihoods reinforce each other.
TURNING THE TIDE
The scale of that fight is immense. Since the Three-North Shelterbelt Forest Program launched its critical-phase battle in 2023, the central government has invested 88.9 billion yuan (about 13.06 billion U.S. dollars) and implemented 544 key projects, and completed construction tasks covering 244 million mu (about 16.27 million hectares), according to the National Forestry and Grassland Administration.
China's sandified land is now shrinking by an average of 10 million mu per year, a dramatic reversal from the annual expansion of 5.15 million mu recorded at the end of the last century, data from the administration showed.
As one of the countries most severely affected by desertification globally, China's desertified areas are mainly concentrated in the northwest, north and northeast -- a region collectively known as the "three-north."
Across the 4.486-million-square-km Three-North region, which covers nearly half of China's land area, forest-grass coverage has reached 40.76 percent, and 67.82 percent of treatable desertified land has been brought under treatment, the administration said.
On the ground, the gains are tangible. Along the 1,686-km sand front of the Hexi Corridor in Gansu, 1,482 km of forest-grass sand barriers have been built, and 178 of the 212 key wind gaps have been effectively sealed. In Xinjiang, the Taklamakan Desert's 3,046-km green protective belt has been secured, with an additional 9.38 million mu added to widen the buffer.
Inner Mongolia recorded its first-ever net inflow of forest-grass land in 2025, at 2.06 million mu. Forest coverage reached 21.98 percent, up 1.19 percentage points from 2021, while grassland vegetation coverage hit 46.48 percent -- the best level this century.
The Three-North Shelterbelt Forest Program and other projects have demonstrated how ecological restoration can be organically combined with livelihood improvement through long-term planning, innovation-driven development, and social participation, said Stephen Jackson, the UN resident coordinator in China.
FROM SAND TO INCOME
In Qiemo County on the southern edge of the Taklamakan Desert in Xinjiang, 67,700 mu of saxaul forests have been inoculated with cistanche, while drought-resistant crops such as Xanthoceras and protein mulberry have been introduced to diversify the economic mix. The output value of these desert industries exceeded 16.73 million yuan in 2025, with 14 enterprises now participating in the effort.
Further north, in Jinta, leading enterprises have inoculated cistanche on 150,000 mu of saxaul and cynomorium -- another medicinal plant -- on more than 30,000 mu of white thorn, building an integrated supply chain from planting to processing to sales.
In Hotan County, also in Xinjiang, the economics are laid out in the fields. Big-fruit oleaster trees, with a survival rate of 85 to 90 percent, begin bearing fruit in their third year, yielding 1,500 to 2,000 yuan per mu annually. Intercropped alfalfa adds another 2,000 yuan per mu. Some 91,300 mu of desert have been brought under control, involving 1,845 households, according to an official with the county's forestry and grassland bureau.
The ripple effect is visible at the provincial level. In Gansu alone, economic forests now cover 12.78 million mu with an annual output of 55.5 billion yuan, while the understory economy generates 7 billion yuan a year and supports 120,000 jobs. Work-relief programs in Gansu have created jobs for 243,200 people, boosting local incomes by a remarkable 831 million yuan.
In Inner Mongolia, 123,000 farmers and herders earned additional income through desertification control, with 1.81 billion yuan paid out in work-relief wages in 2025 alone.
SCALING WITH TECHNOLOGY
Technology is what makes it possible to apply these models across a frontier stretching thousands of kilometers. China has built a "sky-space-ground" integrated desertification monitoring system and developed a suite of engineering, biological, and chemical sand-control technologies, said Lei Jiaqiang, a researcher at the Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
On the ground, the tools for fighting desertification keep getting smarter. Eighteen science and technology demonstration sites have been established across the Three-North region, deploying desert-control robots and planting machines equipped with BeiDou navigation. A "Smart Sand" AI model is currently being tested, with the goal of providing planners with a digital brain to guide sand-control decisions.
Even solar panels have joined the effort. In parts of the Kubuqi Desert in Inner Mongolia, a "photovoltaic plus desertification control" model operates on a simple logic: panels generate power above, stabilize sand below, and grow grass in between. Farmers and herders raise chickens under the panels and grow tomatoes and potatoes in the shade -- turning barren dunes into productive land.
Looking ahead, the toolkit keeps expanding. Zhu Yajuan, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Forestry, said different desertification control models are taking shape across the Three-North region.
"In the east, there are shrubs and medicinal plants like licorice and astragalus, while in the central and western parts, besides cistanche, you can also taste big-fruit oleaster dates and other dry fruits," she said. Enditem
京公网安备 11010802027341号