Soil/Water Conservation Kept Up Countrywide in ChinaIn recent years, there has been brought about a nationwide upsurge for environment protection and ecological construction in China.In the last two years, China has invested over three billion yuan in water and soil conservation and has come to put a yearly total of over 50,000 sq.km of land under control in promoting the country's ecological environment construction. Reports from the Ministry of Water Resources say that an accumulated 830,000 Sq.km of land has been brought under effective control in China by the end of 1999. Statistics show that installations and facilities newly built and reconstructed for water and soil conservation in China can retain a yearly amount of 1.5 billion tons of silts and 25 billion cubic meters of water in contributing to 17 billion kg of grain yields and 25 billion kg of fruit. In 1999, the Ministry of Water Resources chose 10 cities, 100 counties and 1,000 small river valleys as soil/water conservation demonstration projects for national ecological construction. So far, the first group of projects have reached the set standard and passed through inspection at the state level. However, Zhang Xuejian, vice-director of the Department of Water and Soil Conservation reminded that China is still one of the countries suffering from most serious soil erosion. To show this, he said, a yearly total of 3.67 million sq.km of land, 38.2% of the total area of China's territory has been lost as a result of soil erosion. Soil erosion deprives China every year of an acreage of 60,000 hectares of land causing a loss of over 10 billion yuan to the nation. It forms therefore the arduous task facing China to press on with its soil/water conservation construction. |
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