China, somewhat like the US, has a lush, rainy Eastern half, with it's more Southern area approaching the conditions of a tropical rainforest, and a vast, dry, high-elevation Western area which includes the enormous Gobi Desert.  China's capacity to expand, produce more agricultural, biomass, and forestry material, and feed itself more intensive foodstuffs (like meat) is largely constrained by the desert in that almost all other land that can be put to productive purpose is already being used - so it's essential that the desert get no larger.

The capital Beijing is located just on the Eastern edge of the desert and has the traditional problems of water scarcity, dust storms, and desertification the scale of which was becomming nearly disastrous within the last few decades. To combat these effects, the Chinese have embarked on a massive campaign of tree-planting, lake-bed lining, and heavy regulation of agriculture in the barely-arable marginal lands on the desert's border.  This news indicated they've been having some success.

From the International Herald Tribune:

China said Tuesday it was winning the struggle against encroaching deserts, with the threat to vulnerable land steadily decreasing over the past half-decade.

Desert coverage has been falling by about 1,200 square kilometers (460 square miles) each year for the past five to six years, Zhu Lieke, deputy director of the State Forestry Administration, said at a news conference.

If true, that means that since 2001 China has reclaimed about 2,700 square miles of land, an area larger than the state of Delaware!

Chinese officials said last year that deserts still cover 2.64 million square kilometers (1.05 million square miles), or about 27 percent of the country.

That's an area bigger than Alaska and Texas combined!

Since 1981, China has planted 49.2 billion trees — the equivalent of 219,000 square kilometers

And that's like planting a forest the size of the state of Kansas!

... The government is aiming to have 26 percent of the country covered with forests by 2050