|
|
|
|
|
| June 1, 2000 | atimes.com | ||
|
|
China
Destitution leads to deserts in China's west By Antoaneta Bezlova HANTIANLING, China - In this tiny village in western China, whose name means ''dry sky and land'', Hui Muslim villagers have learned how to survive severe drought year after year. After all, their parents had told them the famine of 1929 brought cannibalism, and during the famine of 1960, the villagers ate bark and tree seeds. Though not far from the Yellow River, water is a big problem for Hantianling and hundreds other villages in this remote western area, populated with Islamic Chinese. Ningxia province, where Hantianling is located, is one of the most arid areas in the world and is regularly hit by drought and sandstorms. Encroaching deserts have been eating into its arable land year by year and now they threaten to overtake the little that remains. Ma Zhongqing, a Hui Muslim villager, opens the lid of the well in front of his house and shows how little water is left at the bottom. ''If there is no more rain, there is no water, not even to drink,'' Ma says. ''Last year there was no rain so the crops failed.'' Economic duress has forced Ma and more than 100,000 other farmers to destroy the environment to earn a living. They are plucking the grasslands clean to pick up and sell ''facai'', a black moss that grows in the barren hills and is a popular edible gift in southern China. ''Almost all our income comes from the facai,'' Ma says. ''It is hard work. In winter [when the demand for facai is the greatest] it is very cold and not many can bear it, but at least we can live.'' Other Hui Muslim farmers dig up the grasslands to collect liquorice root, known also as the ''king of Chinese medicine'' because of its use in many traditional medicinal preparations. While ripping out and selling the grass has helped destitute farmers in the area to survive, the destruction of vegetation has also quickened desertification. Grass diggers are blamed for the destruction of one-third of the total grassland on the Qinghai Tibet plateau. With no more grass to arrest the march of the sand, desertification has become one of the most serious environmental perils for China in recent years. Deserts now occupy one-third of China's territory and are growing by 2,400 square kilometers every year. About 110 million people live in regions affected by the quickening desertification. Experts blame deserts for the atrocious sandstorms that pounded northwestern China this spring, paralyzing life in three provinces for days in a row. While the sandstorms are a yearly event, they are now 20 times more frequent than in the 1960s. A recent article in one of China's leading magazines, China Biweekly Comment, put the financial losses caused by sandstorms at 54 billion yuan ($6.5 billion) annually - three times the revenue of five northwestern provinces in China. A desert called ''Heavenly Desert'' is now only 70km west of Beijing, and the recent sandstorms have pushed it closer, according to the article. Experts warn that the proportion of land turning into desert in China is 18 times the world average. In the 1980s, the government tried to combat the sands by launching a massive afforestation campaign called ''the Green Great Wall''. Three belts of forests were planted on an area of 10 million hectares. But in Ningxia at least, many of the trees died, attacked by a plague of longhorn beetles. The scope of the damage has been such that the United States has banned imports of wooden shipping pallets from China for fear of importing the insects. ''In Ningxia, the bulls [beetles] damaged several hundred thousands poplar trees planted in the early 1980s,'' says Kong Zhaozhen, director of the Environmental Protection Bureau in Yinchuan. ''We had to cut all of them to control the pests.'' Now the central leadership is pushing a new program to reforest western China and bring the desertification under control by 2030. Premier Zhu Rongji announced recently that by 2050 a quarter of the land surface in the country will be covered by forest. To guarantee the success of the plan, local leaders in Ningxia want the Hui Muslim farmers to give up both growing grain and harvesting facai so that land can be used for planting new trees. ''Each peasant will receive 100 kilograms of free grain per year to compensate for the loss of arable land,'' explains Kong. Peasants will be given fruit trees and bushes to grow as cash crops and increase the vegetation cover. However, villagers in Hantianling are skeptical about the new policy. ''The leaders in Beijing might say they would give us the grain for free, but what if the village head wants us to pay?'' asks Ma Zhongqing. Then, he adds bitterly: ''We have seen many of those new policies.'' (Inter Press Service) |
|||||||||
|
|
|
Front | China | Southeast Asia | Japan | Koreas | India/Pakistan | Central Asia/Russia | Oceania Business Briefs | Global Economy | Asian Crisis | Media/IT | Editorials | Letters | Search/Archive Cheap Airline Tickets to Madurai India |
|
back to the top ©2000 Asia Times Online Co., Ltd. Asia Times Online is designed and produced by Multimedia Asia Co., Ltd. |
