Protection for nation's precious biodiversity

TO PROTECT ITS NATURAL RESOURCES, China is to establish four national parks that cover about 215,000 square kilometers of land, or 2 percent of the country's territory, Yang Weimin, deputy head of the Office of the Central Leading Group on Finance and Economic Affairs, said on Monday. Beijing News commented on Tuesday:

Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, has reviewed plans for the four pilot national parks and demanded that their ecological integrity be restored, according to Yang. The national parks are expected to "give roughly 2 percent of China's territory back to giant pandas, Siberian tigers, leopards and Tibetan antelopes", and to "leave our future generations a larger area of pristine land".

A priority of the national park system is preserving biodiversity, a key indicator of local ecological well-being and environmental health. Among the world's most biodiverse countries, China has suffered great ecological losses as a result of its rapid economic development.