China's Inner Mongolia achieves high-quality development over past decade

HOHHOT, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- North China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region has achieved high-quality growth over the past decade, focusing on ecological and green development, according to a press briefing on Monday.

Over the past ten years, Inner Mongolia's GDP increased from 1 trillion yuan (about 146 billion U.S. dollars) in 2012 to more than 2 trillion yuan in 2021, said Sun Shaocheng, Party chief of Inner Mongolia.

Meanwhile, 1.57 million impoverished residents in Inner Mongolia were lifted out of poverty in the past decade. The per capita disposable income of residents in the region increased from 42,000 yuan in 2012 to 85,000 yuan in 2021.

The region had planted about 8.13 million hectares of forests and 19 million hectares of grass during the period amid its sand-control efforts, according to Sun.

The grassland vegetation coverage and forest coverage increased from 40.3 percent and 20.8 percent to 45 percent and 23 percent over the past decade, respectively. As the area of desertification and desertified land continued to decrease, the number of sandstorm days in the region fell from 4.9 days to 0.6 days per year.

Inner Mongolia has made great efforts to develop a modern energy economy during the period, with a total installed power capacity reaching 156 million kilowatts, including 56 million kilowatts from new energy.