The western region on the upper reaches of the Yangtze River and Yellow River serves as a protective screen for the ecological environment in China. Soil erosion in the region has become the most serious issue in the country's environmental protection endeavor.

China now has started ecological conservation projects in the west including virgin forests protection programs, soil erosion control programs, water conservancy and irrigation projects, ecological farming projects and desertification control projects. Tree felling has been banned in the upper valleys of the Yangtze and Yellow rivers.

In the coming decade, Yunnan and Sichuan provinces and four other provinces and autonomous regions will jointly invest 120 billion yuan (14.5 billion US dollars) to conserve the forests in the upper valley of the Yangtze; Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region is to spend five billion yuan to harness the Tarim River; in Shaanxi Province, the state will invest 20 billion yuan to replant trees and grass on low-yield farmland.

Hu Angang, an ecologist and economist with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, is confident of the future in west China, According to him, actual state investment in ecological protection programs in the next ten years might exceed the planned figure of 200 billion yuan (24 billion US dollars).

From now on, he said, the dearth of ecological projects in west China must change, and a new era will be ushered in for China to tackle its ecological deterioration.

In fact, in the past two decades, China has had rich experiences in eliminating ecological problems in the western region. Taking advantage of state-of-the-art technology, China has curbed soil erosion on the Loess Plateau from deteriorating with many man-made oases in desert regions.

Especially in the past two years, major breakthroughs have been made in water resources exploration in arid areas in the west. According to experts' predictions, the underground water storage for annual exploitation has reached 16.3 billion cu m. The rich water resources will benefit the green projects in west China.

It is the government's goal that by 2020, the forest coverage rates on the upper reaches of the Yangtze and Yellow rivers will be increased to 45 and 27 percent from the current 22 and 10 percent respectively. And by the middle of the next century, west China will boast a beautiful landscape. (Xinhua)