China's afforestation has made remarkable achievements in promoting land greening.

After more than 30 years of continuous afforestation, our country has more trees, greener mountains and greener land. What is more gratifying is that the ecological concept of loving green and protecting green is also deeply rooted in the hearts of the people and has become a trend. It takes three generations to make a gentleman. Only by turning afforestation into a long-term action with the participation of the whole people, can China become more and more beautiful.

It is another Qingming Festival, the capital voluntary tree planting activities also ushered in the 34th year. On the morning of April 3, party and state leaders participated in the voluntary tree planting activity in the capital. When participating in tree planting activities, General Secretary Xi Jinping stressed that afforestation is an important way to achieve blue sky, green earth, and clean water, and is the most universal project for people's livelihood. It is necessary to persist in national mobilization and the whole people to plant trees and afforestation, and strive to turn the construction of beautiful China into the conscious action of the people.

Since the founding of New China, especially in the past 30 years, under the attention of previous party and state leaders, China has made solid progress in afforestation, and remarkable achievements have been made in the "three North Project" and the "Natural Forest Protection Project". Echoing with afforestation, the green concept has become commonplace. The concepts of "environment is people's livelihood", "green hills are beautiful" and "blue sky is happiness" are deeply rooted in the hearts of the people.

Engineering protection: vast land from yellow to green

During the Qingming Festival, on the riverbed of the Ru River in Yanghe Village, an ancient town in Pengyang County, Ningxia, the blue waves are swaying, the reeds are green, and the waterbirds are flying. Pengyang is located in the arid and rainless area of the northwest. Due to the destruction of vegetation, it is impossible to conserve Rain Water, and the Ruhe River dries up for most of the year and reaches the bottom. Over the past 30 years, persistent artificial afforestation has greatly increased Pengyang's forest coverage from 3% to 27%, and the "seasonal river" has become a "long water".

The change of Ruhe benefits from the "three North Project", an important shelterbelt construction project in our country. Zhang Wei, director of the three North Shelterbelt Construction Bureau of the State Forestry Administration, said, "since the launch of the project in 1978, the three North Project has added 150000 square kilometers of soil erosion control area, and nearly 50 per cent of the soil erosion area has been controlled to varying degrees."

Over the past 36 years, the "three North Project" has afforested a total of 7.791 million hectares in the Loess Plateau, and the regional forest coverage has increased from 11 percent at the beginning of the project to 19.55 percent, realizing a historic change in mountains and rivers from "yellow" to "green." The source of wind and sand in Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei has successfully realized the advance and retreat of sand. The monitoring data of the Yellow River Regulation Committee of the Ministry of Water Resources show that the average sediment transport of some tributaries of the Yellow River in recent 5 years is significantly lower than the annual average. Among them, the Wuding River Baijiachuan, Yan River Ganguyi, Fenhe Hejin and other monitoring stations decreased by more than 90%, and the Jinghe Zhangjiashan and Weihe Huaxian monitoring stations decreased by more than 70%.

Urban green lung: let people see the mountain and see the water

Let the city integrate into nature, so that residents can see the mountains, see the water, and remember to live in homesickness. New ideas and practices of urban greening are changing the face of the city.

On April 2, the Tianjin City appearance and Landscape Commission revealed that the Houtai City Park, located in the western Houtai area of the central city of Tianjin, is under intense construction and is expected to meet with the public this year, and Tianjin will add a new big city green lung. In recent years, it has been reported in more and more cities that the construction of urban green lung is becoming an important greening project in many cities across the country.

According to the reporter's understanding, in recent years, the State Forestry Administration has organized a series of urban forest construction projects, wetland restoration projects, ecological culture construction projects and ecological civilization education projects in more than 140 cities around the two major themes of "planting green on the earth" and "planting green in the heart." According to statistics, from 2011 to 2013, cities across the country completed 16.7 million mu, 18.8 million mu and 26.127 million mu of new afforestation, accounting for 19%, 21% and 30% of the total afforestation in that year, respectively.

Innovative form: afforestation and greening participation of the whole people

In recent years, the enthusiasm of people from all walks of life to participate in afforestation continues to run high. According to the "2014 Bulletin on the State of Land Greening in China" released recently, last year, organs directly under the Central Government and various units of central state organs organized cadres and workers of organs to participate in voluntary tree planting activities, planting about 339000 trees and shrubs. The Communist Youth League system organizes 5.984 million young people to participate in the campaign to protect the Mother River and to create youth forests and grasslands.

The extensive participation in afforestation is inseparable from the improvement of afforestation policy and mechanism. Over the past year, forestry reform in collective forest areas has been deepened. New progress was made in the registration of forest rights, and the household contract rate was nearly 2 percentage points higher than that in 2013. The policy support and incentive mechanism for afforestation and greening were significantly strengthened. In 2014, central forestry invested 151.7 billion yuan, an increase of 6.7 billion yuan over 2013. 24 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities), three separately listed cities and the Daxing'anling Forestry Group are included in the scope of premium subsidies for forest insurance by the central government, covering an area of 140 million hectares.

It is particularly worth mentioning that with the vigorous development of the Internet, the form of voluntary tree planting is also constantly innovating. The "Network Tree planting and Happy Home-Western Greening Action" ecological poverty alleviation public welfare project implemented by the China Greening Foundation is one of them. The project was launched in 2009, with one end providing netizens with an online "tree planting" platform and an offline connection between "online tree planting" and greening projects in poor areas of western China. People can plant a sapling on a barren land through a virtual space.

At present, more than 560000 netizens have participated in the ecological public welfare project and donated nearly 10 million yuan. The two eco-economic forest projects in Tongwei, Gansu and Jinxiu, Guangxi alone have helped local poor families plant more than 100000 trees, benefiting nearly 20, 000 poor families, with an average survival rate of more than 80%.