BEIJING, April 3 (Xinhua) -- Despite the impact of the novel coronavirus outbreak, China is pushing for large-scale afforestation in the spring to achieve more tangible results.
"Our work was delayed for a few days, so we're racing against the clock to plant trees," said Wang Changhong, who is working on the southern edge of Badain Jaran Desert, a major desert in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
The 50-year-old afforestation worker can dig nearly 2,000 tree holes over a desert area of more than three hectares, earning more than 400 yuan (about 57 U.S. dollars) a day.
"Though it's hard work, it's all worth it when I can help green the land and earn a good pay," he said.
To meet the schedule, more workers were mobilized to join Wang's planting team. By the end of April, they are expected to complete afforestation of over 933 hectares.
Last year, about 908,667 hectares of trees and 2.14 million hectares of grass were planted in Inner Mongolia. It plans to green over 1.8 million hectares of land with trees and grass in 2020.
Similarly, great efforts to organize poor farmers to shake off poverty by shouldering more afforestation work have been made in other parts of China.
Ma Yijie, Party secretary of Xinmin Township in northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, said the local government has purchased nearly 4 million seedlings from impoverished households, who live at the foot of Liupan, an important ecological barrier to conserve water and soil on the Loess Plateau and also one of the most severe poverty-stricken areas in China.
In the past, Yu Junhu, a 32-year-old local farmer, had to spend as long as around one hour carrying only three or four saplings to the planting site on the mountainside.
With the advancing green development in the township since 2017, the areas with favorable topographic conditions have all been afforested, leaving only steep mountain slopes uncovered.
To improve the efficiency of afforestation and reduce the risk of manual transport work, Yu and his fellow villagers set up a simple cableway this year to transport seedlings to the mountainside after they were transported by vehicle to the top of the mountains, reducing their transport time to just two to three minutes.
Since March 20, they have planted around 500 hectares of trees in this way, more than half of the annual afforestation task. It is expected that Ningxia will increase its afforestation investment in Xinmin up to over 2 billion yuan.
Meanwhile, Chinese people also see more green spaces in the cities.
"I remember when I was a child, this was a wasteland," said Chen Youlin, 63, a resident strolling through an urban forest park built in 2018 near the Beijing Workers' Stadium.
"It's not easy to set up a park in a place with high land costs," he said.
A previous greening campaign in Beijing from 2012 to 2015 saw more than 54 million trees planted. In 2020, the capital will focus on the construction of 41 urban leisure parks, 13 urban forest parks and 50 small parks and green areas.
It also plans to add 13,333 hectares of forests and greenbelts to improve the city's forest coverage rate to 44.4 percent this year, according to the city gardening and greening bureau.
With a resolve to pursue green development and build a "Beautiful China," the country has made new strides in advancing afforestation in recent years.
The forest coverage rate of the country increased from about 8 percent in the early days of the People's Republic of China to 22.96 percent in 2019, said Huang Runqiu, vice minister of ecology and environment.
A study in February last year using data from NASA satellites showed that China had contributed at least 25 percent of the increase in the global green leaf area since the early 2000s, ranking first in the world.
China's contribution to the global greening efforts comes in large part from its long-term afforestation plan. Between 2013 and 2018, the country completed afforestation of 40 million hectares. Its area of newly created forests reached 7.07 million hectares last year.
The increase was also partly attributed to increasing public participation in voluntary tree planting.
In Jilin Province, citizens are encouraged to plant three to five trees per person per year and participate in afforestation activities including donations and volunteer work.
More than 500 million people have participated in the Ant Forest, a virtual tree planting project in the mobile payment app Alipay. A total of 122 million real trees had been planted last year via the project.
"Some of the afforestation work I did last year was funded by Ant Forest. It made me feel the concerns of 'virtual planters' and full of energy when I planted real trees," said Wang Changhong.
Home to the world's largest manmade forest, China aims to complete afforestation of more than 6.7 million hectares and increase the forest cover to 23.04 percent in 2020, and to 26 percent by 2035.
