China will invest over 800 billion yuan (US$96.7 billion) in forestry over the next seven years, said a forestry scientist in Shanghai.

The scale of this investment in forestry was rare, said Peng Zhenhua, chief scientist of the China Forestry Research Institute Tuesday. China has made a three-step strategic plan for the first half of the 21st century to increase its forest coverage to over 26 percent. The goal of the first step is to increase the area to above 19 percent by 2010, which would require a total investment of 839.8 billion yuan (US$101.5 billion) between 2003 to 2010, said Peng.

Most of the investment would go to six major forestry projects, including return of cultivated land to woodland, control of the sources of sandstorms affecting Beijing and Tianjin and protection of wild plants and animals.

The six projects will operate in over 97 percent of China's counties with the planned forest area of more than 1.1 billion mu (70 million hectares) and the planned investment of more than 700 billion yuan (US$84.6 billion).

(Xinhua News Agency July 17, 2003)