The desert is moving

I saw this on the news yesterday.

Beijing was being swamped with sand blowing in from the Gobi desert near by and all the residents of the city were forced to wear face masks to move around. Smaller villages outside the Chinese capital did not fare as well. Here is a picture of a house almost completely under sand.

I was quite surprised to see so much sand in Beijing, but after reading a bit (on the net, of course), I found that more than 27%, or 2.5 million square kilometers, of the country comprises of useless sand!

And here's another (disturbing) fact...just 7% of Chinese land feeds about a quarter of the world's population!

And all this while, people have been predicting that the desert will move closer.

I am in the middle of reading this book called "The coming collapse of China" by Gordon Chang. The book is mostly about the economics and the politics of economics in China today. The point, however, is not the apocalyptic pronouncements of the book but a startling prediction the author has made which I am seeing before my very eyes.

Chang says China's countryside is suffering "the worst environmental crisis in the history of the world. Flooding and deforestation are making the rivers run black and promoting the encroachment by the desert on arable land."

This is a very strong pronouncement. Of course, the sand has blown in from the desert for decades. This is not news. What is new is the intensity and the increase year on year.

Since I have not yet finished the book, I cannot say whether I get the author's point or not.

I will say this, though. He does make some very serious assertions. None of them look pretty.