The north-western part of China exists in the midst of Eurasian Continent and there are many big sand deserts which were formed by originally natural conditions. On the contrary in the northern part of this country, there extended very wide and fertile grasslands in old times, which provided good pastures for the nomadic people. But such grasslands were gradually devastated and desertified by their artificial activities. Moreover, we can find some other desertified areas in the west and the east of this country. The former areas are found around the oases and at the downstreams of inland drainage, the latter areas are found in the alluvial plains of the North China Plain and the North East Plain. But most of desertified areas are located on the former grasslands in the northern, semi-arid region. Why such a wide desertified region appeared here? It was brought mainly from the over-development of farmlands, over grazing of sheeps and over-felling of bushes for fuels.
Since about 2, 000 years ago the desertification in China started, and about two-third of such areas were formed in historical ages, but remaining one-third were transformed from the grasslands in recent 50 years, which include the days after the liberation, and it is called the modern desertification. The distribution of desertified areas are shown in Fig. 2, and the acreage is shown in Table 1.
After the liberation Chinese government maintained their agricultural policy to give priority for grain production, and attached importance to the development of the farmland, neglecting the possibilities of desertification. However, after the ending of Cultural Revolution, Chinese government began to notice the terrible influences of desertification, and changed their policy to develop the pastoral economy in the semi-arid region. The improvement of grasslands in the desertified areas is going on, and the reforestation also started to protect the fields and the villages from the hazard of moving sands.
The National Institute of Desert Research in Lanzhou, Academia Sinica, clarified the counterplan for the recovery of the desertified areas, according to their regional characteristics. I will introduce some materials about this counterplan for the discussion in future.
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