China creates green miracles

"Lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets." This remark was first made by Chinese President Xi Jinping when visiting Yucun village, Anji county, east China's Zhejiang province almost 16 years ago as the then-secretary of the CPC Zhejiang Provincial Committee.

The village, boasting high-quality limestone resources, established massive limekilns, brickyards and cement plants in 1990s, and became the largest limestone mining area in Anji, pocketing over three million yuan (around $458,000) in collective income on an annual basis.

However, the blooming mining business resulted in a severe damage to the local ecosystem. For a time, the village was clouded by smoke and fog, and plants were starting to become withered. Besides, residents were crippled and even dead because of mining accidents.

In late 1980s, cement plants were booming in Yucun village, producing thick smoke.

To alter the situation, Yucun village put a cap on the mining industry and vigorously developed ecotourism relying on its rich bamboo resources. After years of treatment, Yucun has turned from a severely polluted village into a high rated tourist attraction.

Xi's line of "Lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets" is now engraved on a stele at the gate of the village to welcome tourists from across the country.

A stele engraved with Xi's remark "Lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets" stands at the gate of Yucun village.

In traditional development models, what comes with economic growth are compromises in environmental protection.

If China kept its traditional and extensive mode of production, the country could hardly guarantee enough resources and environment for sustainable development.

Since the 18th CPC National Congress in 2012, China has revised its law on environmental protection, which was considered the most strict one in the country's history, and rolled out a series of documents to advance institutional reform on ecological progress.

From that time, environmental protection and ecological progress have been advanced in China regularly, institutionally, and systematically.

Changting county, southeast China's Fujian province, is a beneficiary of the country's ecological efforts. After decades of treatment, the county, which was once seriously troubled by soil erosion and covered by little vegetation, is seeing nearly 80 percent of its land covered by forests.

Photos show changes to Changting county over the past years.

In the Bai'erye sandbank, Hohhot, north China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region, 85,000 mu (about 5,667 hectares) of mobile and semi-mobile sand dunes and 35,000 mu of soil erosion areas have been effectively treated. Now, 120,000 mu, or 75 percent of the sandbank is covered by grass and trees.

Photo shows changes to the Bai'erye sandbank.

Saihanba forest farm in Chengde, north China's Hebei province, has been turned into a massive artificial forest from a barren desert thanks to the efforts made by three generations of constructors over the past half century, who were honored the Champions of the Earth Award by the United Nations.

Photos show changes to the Saihanba forest farm.

Constructors Chen Yanxian (second from left), Liu Haiying (middle), and Yu Shitao (second from right) of the Saihanba forest farm pose for a picture with Erik Solheim (first from right), executive director of the UN Environment Programme, when receiving the Champions of the Earth Award, Dec. 5, 2017.

After generations of greening efforts, Mu Us Desert, one of the four major deserts in China, is sending 400 million tons less of sediment into the Yellow River each year.

 Photo shows changes to the Mu Us Desert.

Yulin-Jingbian Expressway, which runs through the Mu Us Desert, is the first desert expressway built in China.

The Kubuqi Desert, the seventh largest desert in China, as well as the only desert in the world that has been treated on the whole, is acknowledged by the UN as a global ecological economy demonstration zone.

Photo shows the construction of a highway crossing the Kubuqi Desert in 1990s.

Wetlands formed by the water of the Yellow River in the ice flood season in the Kubuqi Desert show brilliant colors under the sunlight.

According to data from authoritative agencies, including the National Aeronautics and Space Administration of the U.S., global green leaf area increased by 5 percent from 2000 to 2017, an area equivalent to the Amazon rainforest. About a quarter of that gain came from China, the largest among all countries.