# Great Wall Growing on Railroad Tracks Shanghai to Beijing, May 2003

# Great Wall Growing on Railroad Tracks Shanghai to Beijing, May 2003
In 2003, in the shadow of China's economic growth, desertification and yellow sand were becoming more serious, and even large coastal cities were troubled by their arrival in early spring. Against this backdrop, a citizens' organization, "Association to Support Greening of China and Prevention of Desertification," was established on May 8 of the same year to promote greening through Japan-China cooperation. The group proposed the construction of a "Green Great Wall of the 21st Century" by building a tree-planting zone along the high-speed railroad line from Shanghai to Beijing. The idea was to create a windbreak and soil stabilization system in parallel with the development of transportation infrastructure. The plan was based on a three-tiered mixed planting system that combined shrubs and grasses with fast-growing poplars, which are easy to propagate by cuttings, as the main tree species, and aimed to establish a domestic nursery system to ensure a large supply of high-quali
ty seedlings. At the time, national-scale projects were underway, such as the Sanboku Protected Forest Project in 1978 and the Returning Forest Project around 1999, and there was a trend toward integrating afforestation and disaster prevention with the transportation network. Related technologies included straw grids for sand and sand hardening, geotextiles, drip irrigation, and slope protection, while pruning and row renewal were also included in conservation plans. Greening was positioned as a social infrastructure concept that aimed to simultaneously improve the environment and revitalize the economy by creating jobs and warming the local economy through the procurement of materials.