Colonizing and Cultivating the Grasslands
To a large extent, the spreading sands of Inner Mongolia are due to actions of people just like Chen Jiqun, a Han Chinese. Inner Mongolia witnessed waves of in-migration by Han Chinese dating back to the end of the Qing Dynasty in the 19th century. While many chose to migrate in order to escape overcrowding along China's coasts, the imperial government sent others, including soldiers, to secure the border region. The Han Chinese brought with them requisite knowledge and technical expertise in agriculture and began farming, transforming the grasslands of southern Inner Mongolia into cultivated fields.

The culture and economy of the Han Chinese diverged sharply from the traditional pastoral economy of the indigenous Mongols. As the number of Han Chinese grew, they forced the indigenous Mongol herders into smaller, less fertile areas. Many Mongol herders responded by moving northward, with some settling in modern day Mongolia.

Over time, a mixture of Han Chinese farmers and stationary Mongol ranchers occupied the warmer, wetter southern part of Inner Mongolia while nomadic Mongol herders controlled the colder, drier northern areas. This boundary gradually edged northward as Han Chinese continued to migrate into Inner Mongolia throughout the turmoil of early 20th century China. By 1949, when the People's Republic of China was founded, there were five Han Chinese for every one Mongol in the area.

This historical trend of Han Chinese farmers displacing nomadic Mongol herders accelerated in the 1950s and 1960s with the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, respectively. Large numbers of Han Chinese were sent to the region and told by Mao to "take grain as the key link." They greatly expanded the reach of irrigation beyond the area's carrying capacity by building levees and ditches, growing wheat and corn on the converted grasslands.

The strategy was somewhat successful during warm, wet years, but proved disastrous with the arrival of cold, dry years. There were massive crop failures throughout Inner Mongolia in the 1960s, leaving the thin topsoil uncovered and unprotected from the harsh winds of the grasslands. Wind erosion did the rest.

Within the space of a few years, the land changed from grasslands to cultivated farmland to desert. Areas that received enough irrigation were able to hold out for a few more years, but once aquifers began dropping in the 1970s desertification accelerated despite new farm policies that promoted replacing grain with less intensive crops.

"What we have come to learn," said John Liu, who also is a doctoral candidate in soil science at University of Reading in England, "is that human activity without ecological understanding leads to ecosystem collapse. Scientifically speaking you've got numerous complex synergistic systems. Human beings intervene and disrupt these systems without understanding what they are doing. It starts a progression and that progression can be tracked as the development trajectory. In Inner Mongolia the development trajectory caused a loss of ecosystem function. Biodiversity and natural stability are indicators of ecological health and the development trajectory has led, in parts of Inner Mongolia and across China to ecosystem collapse."

The widening disaster is taking a toll on China economically and diplomatically. Desertification alone has been estimated to cost China $7 billion a year in lost agricultural production. The sandstorms also spread the economic consequences beyond China's borders to Korea and Japan, where high-tech semiconductor and electronics factories are especially vulnerable to the fine sand. Indeed, Korean experts estimated economic losses from dust in 2002 at $4.6 billion.

Of even more concern to Korean and Japanese, as well as Chinese officials are the health effects of sandstorms, especially on the elderly and young. Not only are scientists concerned about increased incidence of eye, nose, and throat irritation and asthma, but also the long-term health effects of breathing the fine quartz dust. They are particularly worried about the development of pneumoconiosis, a non-industrial version of silicosis, putting citizens at greater risk of tuberculosis, heart disease, and lung cancer.

The lung cancer risk is exacerbated by the cocktail of pollutants that attach to the dust particles as they travel through the heavily industrialized areas of eastern China. According to Korean scientists, the sulfur, lead, arsenic, and other heavy metals carried by the sandstorms are raising mortality rates from respiratory and cardiovascular causes. Taiwanese scientists report a significant rise in strokes during and immediately after sandstorms. The U.S. Armed Forces in Korea are concerned enough to have implemented a continuously updated yellow sand warning system, and cancel heavy training when sandstorms blanket the country. Countries in the region are thus putting diplomatic pressure on China to curtail the sandstorms, with tripartite meetings between Chinese, Korean, and Japanese environmental ministries addressing the issue almost every year since 1999.

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