BEIJING, May 29 (Xinhua) -- China's deserts are shrinking by 7,585 sq km annually, compared with an annual expansion of 10,400 sq km at the end of last century, a senior forestry official said here on Monday.

    The decrease showed the desertification that started in China in the late 1990s had been "primarily brought under control," saidZhu Lieke, deputy director of the State Forestry Administration.

    However, "the work in this regard remains tough," Zhu told the Beijing International Conference on Women and Desertification heldin the Chinese capital.

    As one of the countries in the world that suffer from the most serious desertification problems, China has 2.64 million sq km of land eaten up by desertification, which accounts for 27.46 percentof its land territory.

    Desertification caused direct economic losses of 54 billion yuan (6.75 billion U.S. dollars) a year, and affected the lives ofabout 400 million people, the official said.

    More than 530,000 sq km of desert areas are "controllable, but still lie untouched," Zhu said, adding that efforts to combat the problem were hampered by a shortage of funding.

    The Chinese government invests 2 billion yuan (250 million U.S.dollars) a year in fighting desertification, but it is difficult to hit the target that all the country's "curable" desertified land will be restored by 2050.

    It would cost at least 238.5 billion yuan (29.8 billion U.S. dollars) to reach the goal, said Zhu.

    He warned that harmful human activities, such as overgrazing, over-logging and collection of fire wood, still existed, and global warming could also worsen the trend.

    The Chinese government needed to curb desertification by improving legislation, severely punishing those who damaged the environment and strengthening international cooperation, Zhu said.

    "China is more aware of the issue of desertification and has made tremendous achievements in combating desertification. The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) will continue supporting China in this tough campaign as before," said UNCCD executive director Hama Arba Diallo.

    "We hope more countries can share China's successful experience," he told Xinhua.

    The Beijing International Conference on Women and Desertification was co-sponsored by the UNCCD and the governments of Algeria, Italy and China. The four-day event is one of the major UN conferences to mark the 2006 International Year of Deserts and Desertification.

    More than 150 Chinese and foreign officials and experts in the fields of gender issues and sustainable development would share experience and seek ways to empower women to effectively counter land degradation and rural poverty. Enditem