Hope of the Hopeless: Recharging the Dried-up Qingtu Lake in Minqin

Abstract Minqin is an oasis in the northwest frontier sandwiched by two deserts, Badain Jaran and Tengger, in the Hexi Corridor of Gansu Province. It has long been tucked away in the geopolitical and hydrosocial periphery and stuck in a vicious cycle of soil and groundwater salinization. In the 1990s, Minqin was pronounced an exhausted swamp that would soon be buried by the two encroaching deserts. But, in the new millennium, it soared to landing on the frontpage of every news story on China’s successful campaign of combatting desertification. This chapter chronicles Minqin’s dramatic ascent that brought interbasin water transfers, state funding, as well as a neoliberal regime of resource management. This story is contextualized in Minqin’s environmental and geopolitical histories from the imperial era to the present moment, especially since the 1950s.