Saving China from 'cancer of the Earth'

The government is promoting measures to eradicate desertification, one of the most-pressing problems facing China's western regions, and looking to reclaim vast areas of land. Su Zhou reports from Beijing with Xue Chaohua in Lanzhou.

In January, 65-year-old Guo Wangang took over his father's job. His work is of national importance, but he isn't running a giant corporation; instead he is guarding the Babusha Forest Farm in Gulang, a county in the northwestern province of Gansu.

In the 1970s, Babusha, an enormous sand dune on the southern edge of the Tengger desert, gradually encroached south, threatening the county's social and economic development and the livelihoods of the people who lived there.