Desert steppe (ecological region), traversing the eastern part of Northwest China, has important ecological significance, and is very fragile. In the recent two decades, the vegetation coverage has been improved significantly, but most of the grassland have shown various degrees of degeneration. For a long time, the desert steppe has been regarded as a part of grassland, and its transitional nature has not been fully understood. As a result, the ecological research of desert steppe has lagged far behind the practice of regionally ecological construction. Therefore, this paper further emphasizes the prominent position of desert steppe in the Chinese ecological security pattern in the future, which has been neglected for a long period, and then summarizes the general ecosystem characteristics of desert steppe to point out the main problems in the research of ecological restoration and reconstruction. Finally, the process and mechanism of artificial vegetation driving ecological restoration and reconstruction of desert steppe are analyzed, and the future research direction and tasks are proposed.