Grape grower Hao Ling’s vines at the Yangguan Forestry Farm.
Photographer: Allen Wan/Bloomberg
How Wine Grapes Are Uprooting Trees in China’s Green Great Wall
Local aren’t embracing a government effort to turn desert into forests as part of the country’s wider climate goals.
Springtime, and grape grower Hao Ling and her husband are busy digging the mounds of sandy soil that protected their vines during the long, cold winter of the Gobi Desert. It’s a busy season for the couple, who have been growing wine grapes here for 15 years, but this time they are preoccupied with another matter: their 2.8 acre vineyard may be destroyed by the Chinese government.
They rent the land from Yangguan Forestry Farm, which hit the headlines in China after local media accused the state-owned company of allowing hundreds of acres of forest to be illegally felled and replaced by vineyards—trees that were part of the so-called Green Great Wall designed to hold back the desert.