From the New York Times:
China’s own favorite military strategist, Sun Tzu, surely would have warned against letting two mighty enemies, the Tengger and the Badain Jaran, form a united front.
Yet a desert pincer is squeezing this struggling oasis town, and China’s long campaign to cultivate its vast arid northwest is in retreat.
An ever-rising tide of sand has claimed grasslands, ponds, lakes and forests, swallowed whole villages and forced tens of thousands of people to flee as it surges south and threatens to leave this ancient Silk Road greenbelt uninhabitable. [Full text]
See also the New York Times’ slideshow China’s Sea of Sand.
