SOLOMON HUGHES recommends Sunjeev Sahota’s recent novel set in a trade union election campaign for its fresh approach to what unites and divides workers, but wishes the union backdrop was truer to life
IN 1978, China launched its Three North Shelter Forest (Green Great Wall) Programme, aimed at creating a forest chain extending from Xinjiang in the far north-west to Heilongjiang in the far north-east, to prevent further expansion of the Gobi and Taklimakan deserts. This multi-generational project is scheduled for completion in 2050.
According to the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the programme “has greatly increased the forest coverage and effectively combated desertification in the programme area, improved the overall situation of serious wind-sand hazards and soil erosion, enhanced the resilience and adaptability to natural disasters and climate change.”
Further, “thanks to the development of forest and fruit-related industries, tens of millions of local people have been pulled out of poverty.”
One of the major criticisms of China’s breakneck development in recent decades has been the impact on nature — returning after 15 years away, BEN CHACKO assessed whether the government’s recent turn to environmentalism has yielded results
PAWEL WARGAN juxtaposes the thriving industrial centre Jiayuguan in China, with the prevailing images of decaying East European great industrial cities
Activists from across the world gathered in China for an educational exchange where they witnessed the progress the country has made in building an ecological society and discussed the path to peaceful international relations, reports CALLUM NORRIS



