After an unremitting 50-year effort, Yulin, a city on the Loess Plateau in northern Shaanxi Province, greatly decreased the amount of soil and sand that ultimately find their way into the Yellow River.
Since early 1950s, local people in Yulin have been working to control sand and soil erosion. Some 20,200 square kilometres of soil erosion have been controlled saving 1.09 million hectares of trees, according to Ji Xiaodong, an official with the city's Water and Soil Protection Administration.
"Thanks to the great effort made in the past 50 years, the annual amount of sand and soil falling into the Yellow River has been decreased to 290 million tons from 530 million tons in the early 1950s," Ji said.
Yulin is located along the middle reaches of the Yellow River, China's second longest river which contains the largest amount of sand and soil among all major rivers in the world. The yellow colour of the river is evidence of its sand and soil content.
About 2,000 years ago Yulin was a fertile land with rich products. Continuous wars and natural disasters severely worsened its environmental conditions.
"After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, local government and people started to turn the land green and rich again and the long-term effort is paying off at last," the official said.
Especially in recent years, with more 300 million yuan (US$36.144 million) invested by the central government annually, a large number of environmental improvement projects have been carried out, Ji said.
(China Daily June 7, 2002)
