In the summer of 1981, in view of the catastrophic flood of Sichuan, Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping pointed out that the recent flood was related to forestry, especially the over-deforestation problem. It seemed that drastic measures had to be taken to speed up China's tree planting drive. On his initiative, on December 13, 1981, the Fourth Session of the Fifth National People's Congress discussed and passed the Resolution on the Execution of Voluntary Afforestation Campaign of the Nation. On the Afforestation Day in 1982, Deng Xiaoping led his family to the Yuquan Hills on the western outskirts of Beijing and planted the first tree in China's Voluntary Afforestation Campaign. During the next 15 years, the whole nation planted 25 billion trees.
To speed up afforestation process, Deng Xiaoping made an instruction in regard to afforestation by airplane seeding, "Air forces should assist agricultural and forest building for at least 20 year in order to accelerate the development of agriculture and husbandry as well as afforestation of the country." He urged the nation by saying that "Afforestation is a great cause of socialist construction, which will bring benefit to future generations and it should be carried out relentlessly for 20 years, 100 years and even 1,000 years without stop.''
In 1991, Jiang Zemin, General Secretary of the Chinese Communitst Party Central Committee, made the call of "mobilizing the Party and the nation to green the country" and the people of all ethnic groups were further encouraged to take part in the voluntary afforestation campaign.
In November 1978 when China just began to implement the reform and opening policies, the Party Central Committee and the State Council decided to launch an immense program of building a large-scale shelterbelt in the northeast, north and northwest China. Up to now, this huge shelterbelt, known abroad as China's Green Great Wall, stretches across 13 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions and covers an area of more than 1.3 million hectares. Sheltering a total area of more than 4 million square kilometers, it is the largest ecological project in the world. The Coastal Windbreak winds its way along the coastline, totaling 18,000 kilometers long.
The shelterbelt network on the middle and upper reaches of the Yangtze River whose construction started in August 1989 with approval of the State Council covers 11 provinces. The project was China's first large-scale forestry undertaking in its comprehensive control of rivers. By 1997, a total investment of 600 million yuan had been put into the construction of the project and 4.7 million hectares of forest had been built. After its completion in 2020, the network will greatly slow down the soil erosion in the Yangtze River Delta.
In 1995, the Ministry of Forestry organized the drawing of China Forestry Plan for the 21st century (hereinafter referred to as the Plan). The Plan stipulates China's general goal of setting up a comparatively complete forest ecological system and a relatively developed forestry production system in the middle of the 21st century. At the end of 1995, China had 133 million hectares of forests, a tree store volume being 10.1 billion cubic meters and a forest coverage rate of 13.92 percent of the total territory. Meanwhile, 12 provinces and regions had eliminated barren mountains on the whole.
In 1996, China launched its four main forest ecological projects, namely, the Yellow River Middle Reaches Shelterbelt, the Huaihe River and Taihu Lake Valley Shelterbelt, the Pearl River Valley Shelterbelt and the Liaohe River Valley Shelter Belt. It is planned that by the year of 2000, about 12.35 million hectares of areas will be planted with trees. The Yellow River Middle Reaches Shelterbelt Project involves 177 counties (including county-level cities, banners and districts) in six provinces and regions, with a total anticipated planting area of 3.15 million hectares, among which 1.05 million hectares are planned to be completed by the year of 2000. The Huaihe River and Taihu Lake Valley Shelterbelt Project covers 208 cities, counties and districts in six provinces and one municipality, and the construction will be divided into three stages, with an anticipated afforestation area of 1.33 million hectares and an actual planting area of 900,000 hectares by 2000. The Pearl River Valley Shelterbelt Project involves 177 counties in four provinces and regions; the expected planting area is 6.67 million hectares and 1.2 million hectares of forests will be built by the year 2000. The Liaohe River Valley Shelterbelt Project covers 77 counties (cities, banners and districts) in four provinces and regions, with a total expected planting area of 1.2 million hectares, among which 72,000 hectares are to be finished by the year of 2000.
At the end of 1996, China completed the construction of more than 20 million hectares of forests and thus the natural environment had been greatly improved. The shelterbelt project in the northeast, north and northwest of the country, which is known as "a unique world ecological project" has entered its third-phase construction. The Coastal Windbreak Project successfully linked the 18,000-kilometer-long forest belts along the coast, which plays an important role in resisting typhoon disasters. Following the six key shelterbelts constructed for controlling deserts in northeast, north and northwest China, in the upper and middle reaches of the Yangtze River, in the Central China Plain, along the coast and in the Taihang Mountains area, another four large-scale shelterbelt projects were put under construction one after another in 1996 in the Huaihe River and Taihu Lake Valley, the Pearl River Valley, the middle reaches of the Yellow River and the Liaohe River Valley. At the end of 1996, these 10 key forest ecological projects in the areas frequently hit by flood, drought, wind and sand were under full wing of construction. They cover more than 60 percent of China's total land and the framework of China's forest ecological system had been formed. Altogether 12 provinces and regions had achieved the goal of eliminating barren mountains; the artificial afforestation areas had reached 33.3 million hectares; and the development rate and scale of artificial forest both place China in the first position in the world.
In March 1998, according to the latest evaluation report on world forest resources issued by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, China's forest coverage rate stood at the fifth in the world, while the average per-capita share only ranked 119th. China's land area accounted for 7.2 percent of the world's total, whereas forest area, totaling 134 million hectares, accounted for only 3.9 percent. The overall forest store volume in China was 9.78 billion cubic meters, accounting for 2.5 percent of the world's total and making China the eighth in the world. China's forest store volume per capita stood among the lowest in the world with only 8.6 cubic meters, in comparison with 71.8 cubic meters of the world's average. In China, the proportion of increasing artificial forest per year to decreasing natural forest per year was 2.85:1. Besides, China boasts half of the man-made forest areas of the developing countries.
Random damage of forests on the upper reaches of the Yangtze River is one of the main reasons for the disastrous flood in the summer of 1998. On August 24, Song Baorui, governor of Sichuan Province, declared, "In order to protect forest resources and improve ecological environment in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, from September 1 on, such places as Aba, Garze, Liangshan, Panzhihua, Leshan and Ya'an shall, immediately and unconditionally, stop any damage of natural forests and close all timber markets. Also, a project was started to protect Sichuan's natural forest resources. Since then, forestry production has won further development and the projects to protect natural forest resources have started.
In 1998, investment in forest production increased. The forest-covered area in 1998 totaled 4.73 million hectares, up by 8.5 percent in comparison with last year. A total of 11 million hectares of areas were afforested, a considerable increase in comparison with the previous year.
