The sand-crossing road starts at Xini township of Hangjin Banner in the south, ends at Bayan Nur in the north, crossing the world’s ninth biggest and China’s seventh largest desert—Kubuqi Desert. The road is 115 km in length and construction began in 1997 and finished in 1999. Total investment of the project is 114 million yuan.

To build the sand-crossing road, a sandstorm governance company was established in Hangjin Banner in 1993 (later renamed as Kubuqi Desert ecosystem experimentation site) and full-time personnel were engaged in desert ecological experiments. After years of exploration and practice, comprehensive governance plan featuring "sealing in the north, blocking in the south and cutting in the middle" was developed. That is, to reinforce the perimeter sealing forest belt in the north rim to prevent desert intruding the north; plant trees to fix sand and adopt aerial seeding at scale to prevent the desert expanding to the south; in the hinterland in the middle, divide the Kubuqi Desert up into four sections with the better-endowed Engen ditch and Dabainingtiao natural forest base and the Maobula tributary, and extend to both vertical ends to treat the desert in sections. In addition, "blocking in the front and pulling in the back" sand dune governance approach and long-term governance program were proposed.

At present, a total of 340,000 mu of artificial afforestation was completed on both sides of the sand-crossing road of Hangjin Banner, 560,000 mu of forests were built with aerial seeding, 47,000 mu of sand blocks were set up, 1.07 million mu of sand-fixing grass was planted, which significantly improved the environment. Moreover, vegetation efforts on both sides of the sand-crossing road havewon the second-place prize of Kubuqi Desert sand preventing and governance in Inner Mongolia.

In addition, the Banner government enacted policies to support lead participants, the essence of which is "whoever build, gets; and co-ownership for joint development efforts", attracting a host of companies to invest in afforestation, including the over 3 million mu forests planted by Elion Group.

The completion of the sand-crossing road drove up Banner-wide development in transport, tourism and poverty-aids, significantly reducing the shipping distance between outer regions of Hangjin Banner and the riverfront areas, saving up to 20 million yuan in freight for industrial and agricultural products, increasing tourism income over 10 million yuan and toll income over 6 million yuan.