Top Leaders Plant Trees with 2mn Volunteers in Beijing

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Sunday, April 06, 2003

Top Leaders Plant Trees with 2mn Volunteers in Beijing

China's top leaders joined two million volunteers in the Chinese capital to plant trees on the northern outskirts of Beijing on Saturday, to mark the city's 19th voluntary tree-planting day.

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Top Leaders Plant Trees with 2mn Volunteers

China's top leaders joined two million volunteers in the Chinese capital to plant trees on the northern outskirts of Beijing on Saturday, to mark the city's 19th voluntary tree-planting day.

The Chinese Party and government leaders included Hu Jintao, Jiang Zemin, Wu Bangguo, Wen Jiabao, Jia Qinglin, Zeng Qinghong, Huang Ju, Wu Guanzheng, Li Changchun, and Luo Gan.

They planted a number of pines, gingko trees, and white wax trees in the Olympic Forest Park.

While planting trees, Hu Jintao, general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and state president, talked with officials about afforestation across the country.

Tree-planting Day in Chinese Capital

Hu referred to tree-planting and afforestation as a major issue that would benefit the nation and the people. "We should do it year by year and generation by generation, so as to make our motherland's mountains and rivers more beautiful," he said.

Thanks to the citywide tree-planting efforts to greet the Olympic Games to be held in 2008 and turn the capital city into an ecological one, Hu noted, remarkable achievements have been scored in the local ecological environment, he noted, expressing the hope that substantial, continuous efforts would be made to green and beautify the city, so that Beijing residents would have a still better living environment.

It was the 14th time that Jiang Zemin, chairman of the Central Military Commission, had participated in the voluntary tree-planting program. Jiang planted trees and chatted with elementary school children.

Also participating in the tree planting on Sunday were senior Party and government officials including Wang Zhaoguo, Hui Liangyu,Liu Yunshan, Wu Yi, Zhou Yongkang, He Guoqiang, Guo Boxiong, Cao Gangchuan, Wang Gang, Xu Caihou, He Yong, Tang Jiaxuan, Hua Jianmin, and Chen Zhili.

According to local officials, Beijing plans to increase its forest coverage to 50 percent and an average of 50 square meters per capita by the year 2005.

At a separate event, Jia Qinglin, chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), planted trees on the newly-built CPPCC Square, within the easy reach of the CPPCC Auditorium.

Vice-chairpersons of the CPPCC National Committee Wang Zhongyu,Liao Hui, Liu Yandong, Zhang Siqing, Zhang Kehui, Zhou Tienong, Chen Kuiyuan, Xu Kuangdi, Huang Mengfu, Zhang Huaixi and Li Meng, and Zheng Wantong, the secretary general of the CPPCC National Committee, joined Jia in planting trees on Saturday.

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