BEIJING -- Along the southeastern edge of China's Tengger Desert, workers were pressing bundles of straw rope into the sand in a grid pattern, like a giant checkerboard holding the dunes in place.

"We are reinforcing the windbreak and sand-blocking belt with a newly developed grass grid barrier. It is less labor-intensive than the traditional version, faster to install, and lasts longer -- five to six years," said Tang Ximing, a forestry engineer in Zhongwei, a city in Ningxia Hui autonomous region.

Ningxia lies deep in northwestern China, hemmed in by deserts on three sides, with Zhongwei guarding the corridor where the Tengger Desert historically pushed southeast.

In the 1950s, the city pioneered the straw checkerboard technique to protect the Baotou-Lanzhou Railway -- China's first rail line through a desert -- from being buried by dunes. Decades of continuous efforts followed, and Ningxia eventually became the first provincial-level region in China to reverse desertification.

China's battle against desertification has unfolded on an even larger scale across the country.

As one of the countries most severely affected by desertification globally, China has its desertified areas mainly concentrated in the northwest, north and northeast, which are dubbed the "three-north."