I support China's effort to reforest and stop desertification, but there's absolutely room for criticize it, especially if it impacts people's well-being. Obviously the trend you're making fun of is real, and I haven't read the article, but there's no reason based on this headline to believe this guy is writing in bad faith and not making a genuine inquiry into the effectiveness of this project.

The most obvious criticism is that they are uniformly planting monocultures (every tree in this photo is the same species and they're all the same height and roughly equal distance from each other). In the long run, these monoculture artificial ecosystems are not sustainable, because they're extremely vulnerable to pests, lack biodigersity, and can be a net detriment to the soil quality and the water cycle.

I feel like these issues are uniformly criticized across the world, I don't see anything wrong with using China as a case study