Beijing- Pan Songgang, a reporter for China Population News, said after a recent visit that a village in Minqin County is under the threat of disappearing due to the desert's expansion.

Hemmed in on three sides by two deserts, Tengger and Badain Jaran deserts in the east, west and north, Minqin County is increasingly menaced as the deserts have been sprawling. Today the county is one of the driest places nationwide and it is also one of the most seriously affected by desertification.

"We must never allow Minqin County to repeat the tragedy of Lop Nur," Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao once told deputies to the National People's Congress. Since 2001, Wen has made 14 important comments and instructions on the control of Minqin's desertification.

Lop Nur used to be a lake of about 10,000 sq km in the Tarim Basin of northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. Its water area had kept shrinking since the early 1900s before the entire lake dried up and turned desertified in 1972.

A labourer walks on the dry soil in Minqin Country, northwest China's Gansu province, April 12, 2007.[Pan Songgang]

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