Desertification in China's western region remains a "very serious" problem with 50,000 villages frequently being threatened by sandstorms, a senior forestry official said Wednesday.

 

"The progress we made so far is only preliminary as the general ecosystem in western China is still fragile," said Zang Chunlin, deputy head of Sandstorm Control Office of the State Forestry Administration, in his address to an ongoing forum on Sino-Italian Cooperation on the Environment.

  

China has 2.64 million square km of desert land, 97.58 percent of which lies within the seven western provinces or autonomous regions, such as Gansu, Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, and Ningxia.

  

The western region also lags far behind the east economically, prompting the central government to promote a Develop the West Campaign to address this imbalance.

  

About 90 percent of the low income population in the western

 

(Xinhua News Agency July 6, 2006)