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this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2026
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That sounds awesome, can an independent third party news agency go into China and take pictures to confirm?
My viewpoint: turning it into a carbon sink is likely true. A desert is near carbon neutral in its natural state anyway. Not much grows and not much decomposes. Adding even a bit of vegetation turns it into a carbon sink, but the number next to the minus sign will be very small, considering the total area.
Takla Makan is big (for those acquainted with Europe, about the size of Germany). Planting great numbers of bushes, shrubs and trees along the edges and the river beds will contain its shifting and spare settlements on the edges from the nuisance, but the desert remains a desert.
There is no need to confirm, they've published more than a bit about it. China has been working on containing the desert since 1978. A road was built across the desert more recently, in 1995, and a railway around it. They intend to drill a 11 km research hole to study the local region of the Earth's crust. They intend to produce solar power.
Locals... well, this is Xinjiang. Locals mostly aren't Han (ethnically Chinese) but various Turkic peoples, including the seriously repressed Uyghurs. They would probably fear a mass of Han Chinese moving in more than a mass of sand, but they are most likely OK with the trees, because sand pesters them just as badly. So far, it looks like not much is happening in that part of Xinjiang, because there is not much to build an economy on. Solar power is nice, but if sand buries it, it's not so great. Currently, if you build a solar power plant to a random place in Takla Makan, there is a considerably above-zero chance of the desert burying it. Fencing it with lots of trees (irrigation needed) will allow a project to perhaps operate long enough.
Am on mobile rn and can’t easily search myself but such a large endeavour could be visible from google maps maybe? Even between 2 snapshots ?
There's people in China that put sticks in the ground to make it look like vegetation, and they even paint vegetation green to make it look more healthy. Looking at low quality satellite pictures like Google Maps is unreliable.
Yo at some point that very idea seems more efforts than planting actual trees… few months ago a French YouTuber (Tev) went deeeeeeeep into one of those Chinese desert and filmed greenery in the middle of it. Like a whole garden thingy built just for the lols or something.
Chinese are crafty and industrious fuckers, once they set to something they generally make it happen. Sometimes it’s swallows sometimes it’s trees I guess…
Source? That sounds unbelievable honestly
They stick hay in the sand to create wind breaks that trap moisture and seeds to stop the expansion of the desert. Hundreds of acres with 1 meter grids of hay pressed into the dunes. Ive never seen anyone painting anything but i don't doubt some anti- communist propagandist is saying they are
You can make fun of it, but when party officials come to see, you bet your ass there will be local politicians forcing people to do so. They did the same in Poland in those times.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cvc7VymDa4c
And while they're at it, make sure that the people who completed such a feat were adequately paid for their time and given the rights and good working conditions.
What?... it was indentured minorities? Ah yeah, I figured.
Probably fertilized the soil with the blood of the Uyghurs they've got in concentration camps.
I have yet to find any verifiable evidence of uyghur concentration camps. Ive looked for years and it all comes down to 1 random guy with deep cia ties.
https://www.amnesty.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Amnesty-International_China-Report_FINAL.pdf
Yeah I watched videos of inside the re-education camps and the conditions the people were languishing in in their prison cells.
China has an absolutely horrendous track record of human rights, even for their own citizens as they consider them an expendable resource in their country-sized factory
I dont know you from a bar of soap, so im just going to assume you're a chinese plant designed to spread disinformation on the topic because EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. This topic comes out, all the chinese apologists come out of the woodwork to say it's all fake, but everytime a chinese national tries to tell the world about the organ harvesting, they're immediately shot down by a horde of misinformers like they're waiting for the word "uyghur" or "Xin Jiang" come up.
You yourself seem to have a weird hard-on for bringing up Uighurs arbitrarily when it has zero to do with the subject of the post. Perhaps then you shouldn't throw stones in your glass house and accuse others of waiting to arbitrarily pounce on the word "Xin Jiang", when you obviously do the same thing for the word "China".
Argue your point instead of automatically assuming everyone who doesn't agree with you is a Chinese plant. That just makes you look whiny and weak, and brings no one around to your standpoint.
It's always deflection with your type, sn't it...
Instead of owning up to the crimes against humanity and standing with your fellow man, it's "go look in your own backyard! !!! Don't watch what we're doing to minorities!!!!" Complemented with minsofrmation and disinformation campaigns.
And yes, I have a hard-on for holding countries to account for their human rights abuses, but go off queen, tell me how I look weak and whiny while you simp for billionaires who'll throw you in the gulag before they get held accountable.