How China Turned the Desert into Green Forests

China is rebuilding the Great Wall. However, no longer do they need to build with stones, mortar, sand, and rubble designed to stop the enemy hordes. Nowadays, they build with trees. Just like the wall erected many years ago, the world's largest man-made forest should stop an enemy that China has been fighting for many years and which is no less dangerous than the problem of overpopulation. This enemy is the desert that occupies most of eastern China and continues to grow non-stop. Although China has an area comparable to that of the United States, only 12% of it is arable land. However, China still has the largest agricultural production in the world. All the usable land is farmed intensively, and the government has invested heavily into both increasing yields and conserving the area. It is incredible that such a populous country managed to become self-sufficient in terms of food supply. A striking example of self-sufficiency can be seen in the Xinjiang region in the northwest. It's an almost desert region, but thanks to drip irrigation and technological systems that reduce evaporation, people in Xinjiang grow vegetables without rain. What's the result? Tomatoes, garlic, onions, watermelons, melons, and much more have received international recognition and can compete in taste with fruits grown in southern Italy. Since every hectare of land is essential, desertification has become a real problem, and due to its high rate of spread, is considerably one of China's major environmental issues. And these sandy lands, currently covering up to 27% of the country's territory, are growing rapidly. By 2006, they were devouring usable land at a rate of nearly 1,000 square miles a year, up from 600 square miles in the 1950s. The most insidious enemy is the Gobi Desert. It extends over 386,102 square miles across China and Mongolia and is one of the driest deserts on earth. Sand and dust regularly flood farms and villages, blocking roads and railways. Hundreds of thousands of tons of this substance end up in Beijing and other cities, posing a serious health hazard to their residents. Researchers estimate that desertification costs the Chinese economy billions of dollars a year. Therefore, the need to build a new Great Wall of China arose, and this time, it's green. Unlike the 5,500-mile-long fortification wall erected in the 8th century BC to separate the Celestial Empire from the Mongolian steppes, the Great Green Wall of China is the largest forest-planting project on the planet. Its goal is to create a 2,796-mile-long green belt to halt the expansion of the Gobi Desert while reducing millions of tons of carbon dioxide emissions. If all goes as planned, by 2050 China's forested area will increase from 5% to 15% of the country's total land area. The country decided to create shelter belts along the southern outskirts of China's four largest sandy massifs and eight deserts, as well as along the lowest plateau. This is because the main Chinese deserts are located in the north, northeast, and northwest regions of the Celestial Empire, and the program is designed to protect the country from desert encroachment from the north. The name of the program itself can be roughly translated as Forest Protection of the Three Norths. At the same time, another unofficial name arose, Louise Chong Cheng, the Great Green Wall of China. Its author is believed to be Deng Xiaoping himself. The Chinese did not wait long to initiate the project, and soon the main legislative body of the country made a decision obliging every citizen above 11 years old to plant at least three poplars, eucalyptus, or any larches annually as a common cause. Villagers are paid for planting seedlings, and in some places, the government leases private land for planting forests. Entrepreneurs grow and sell seedlings and harvest mature trees for lumber. All of this is reported to have reduced in poverty in many areas, and it definitely made some people very rich. And so, in recent decades, instead of relying on revolutionary fervor, the government used capitalism to grow trees. The largest environmental project in history involves several methods of reforestation. Rows of grass and common local trees are planted first. Along the second line, rows of drought-resistant shrubs are planted. Then in go the most resistant trees, such as poplar. Different teams are hired to plant them, and seeds are scattered from planes. Not only are professionals and volunteers involved in planting trees, but also Chinese officials, including ministers. In total, more than 500 million people partake in this noble event every year, while the number of planted trees reaches billions. At this time, the project aims to plant 100 billion trees by 2050. Obviously, new technologies made their own contribution. The Chinese now have an opportunity to plant trees not only in person, but using online platforms. Donations are collected on authorized sites, which are then used for planting. Within the past 50 years since the beginning of reforestation, the desert finally stopped advancing. Over the past 10 years, 13 million hectares of trees have been planted to shelter the wind, covering an area the size of Greece. Although the plan has not yet been completed, the forest area in the north has increased from 5% to 13.5%, an area the size of Western Europe. Thus, the Chinese were able to save the land from the desert, which stretches along a distance equal in size to Italy. In the areas where the very first trees were planted, the forest has now grown, and the amount of rainfall has increased. Thanks to plants, the soil can retain rainwater, and the streams have increased their runoff. Wherever the land used to be dry and barren, there are now natural parks, such as the Sehanba National Forest Park, the main attraction in northern China. The project has its critics, though. Their main attacks are directed against the practice of In most cases, only one species of tree was planted, which makes forests vulnerable to epidemics. Plant diseases have in fact destroyed many trees. In 2008, one-fifth of the trees perished, and in the winter, hurricanes destroyed 10% of that year's work. The World Bank urged China to strive for quality of tree species, not quantity. A few years ago, a kind of forest scandal erupted. It is known that large Chinese cities, including Beijing, face the problem of smog, which is getting worse every year despite the government's best efforts. The wind blows the smog out of the cities, but in recent years this happens more rarely. It has been suggested that the free movement of air has been impeded by these new forest plantings, and because of them, the air in the cities stagnates and cannot be cleaned. Zhang Yongli, the deputy head of the State Forestry Administration of the People's Republic of China, was even forced to specifically refute this statement. According to him, trees can restrain air movement only at the very surface of the land. In any case, they have more benefits than drawbacks, including their role in the fight against smog. This may not be a perfect plan, but we cannot forget that China has recently planted more trees than the rest of the world combined. China's Great Green Wall is today the largest man-made forest on Earth.