China experienced 18 sandstorms of different levels in the past five months of this year, affecting nearly 500 million people, sources with the State Forestry Administration said.  

The 18 sandstorms, including one strong sandstorm, five sandstorms and 12 light sandstorms, affected some 800 counties in 15 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions, the sources said.

The most influential sandstorm, which happened from March 9 to 11, affected about 2 million square kilometers with nearly 290 million people. The strongest one, from March 26 to 28, affected almost 1.2 million square kilometers and nearly 70 million people.

The statistics show that Gansu Province, western Inner Mongolia and northeast Inner Mongolia are the three major sandstorm centers in China. This spring, northeast Inner Mongolia witnessed an excessive eight sandstorms.

The number of sandstorms this spring is relatively more than that of 2003, but it is still in the normal range. Most of them, except two serious sandstorms in March, were relatively weak compared with the ones in the previous years, said experts in the administration.

Sandstorms have posed a grave environmental scourge of northeast Asia. Almost every year from March to May since the late1990s, strong cold winds from Siberia blow up a huge volume of yellow dust to Beijing from the vast Gobi desert in Kazakhstan, Mongolia and northwest China.

(Xinhua News Agency June 18, 2004)