This Day, That Year

Item from Oct 11, 1986, in China Daily: Sand dunes that were out of control in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region 10 years ago have finally been tamed. ...

They are gradually giving way to greenery, thanks to a major tree-planting program that helped cover 13,000 hectares of sand with trees and grass every year.

China is a country severely affected by land degradation, with an arid area of 2.6 million square kilometers, or 27 percent of its total land area as of 2009. A further 1.7 million sq km of land was covered by sand, official data showed.