Desert Development: How Does It Relate to Anti Desertification Measures? - Combating Desertification in Asia, Africa and the Middle East - page 415

2. Revolutionary zeal that translated into an urge to colonize the sparsely-inhabited
“wastelands” and develop new sites for food production to meet the post-war
demands. In the New China, the fight to tame nature has featured as a constant
theme born of socialist philosophy.
3. Economic imperatives and the need for more food to cope with the rapidly
growing human populations were key factors.

These three drivers were translated into policy initiatives that led to the present
day environmental crisis.

2.2 Historical Perspectives on Land Use Change

China's recent, and not so recent, history (Squires and Zhang 2010) holds the key
to the present day situation.
In some regions of China's arid zone the seeds for land degradation were sown
well before the birth of New China in 1949. In the eighteenth century the areas
of China that are now most affected by desertification were populated, for the most
part, by nomadic people of the ethnic minorities whose main use of land base was as
herders grazing their livestock on relatively abundant rangelands. Farming activities
commenced in the late nineteenth century in many regions with an influx of Han
nationals in search of unoccupied land for settlement purposes.
Settling of many regions was encouraged by government as a national defense
strategy and quickly resulted in only marginal lands remaining unfarmed. In some
areas it was clear by mid 1920s that no more suitable land was available for
conversion to farmland, yet local peasants were conscripted to meet the food
requirements of the military. In fact then, as today, much of the land being farmed
was unsuited to that activity. Widespread losses of livestock in the inevitable
droughts led to further reliance on cropping and conversion of farmland became
excessive (Wang et al. 2006 ). Figure 20.4 shows the pattern of land conversion and
subsequent degradation as human and livestock populations rose.
In many areas of north and west China there has been a progressive program of
supplanting the traditional land use (Fig. 20.5 ), as practiced by the ethnic minorities,
with the system of farming developed by the Han nationals. The latter relies on
two elements: irrigated cropping and non-ruminant livestock (mainly pigs). It also
depends on external inputs (water, fertilizer, energy, pesticides). In those areas
where the tradition relied on a nomadic or semi-nomadic existence and where
key refugia were reserved for the bad times (droughts/severe winters etc.) a new
system was superimposed. Rivers were dammed, water diverted to support new
oasis development. Ground waters were exploited to supply irrigated agriculture
and settlement. Even the margins of major deserts like the Taklamakan, the Gobi
and the Junggar basin were transformed into large scale state farms where irrigation
was the means by which crops were produced in these harsh environments (Jia et al.
2000 ).