The country's top youth organization Sunday launched a new project calling for young people across the country to take part in a nationwide drive for tree planting and protecting environment.
The project, which focuses on encouraging youth to play a vital role in the campaign to protect China's rivers -- the Yellow River and Yangtze River -- is jointly sponsored by Central Committee of the Communist Youth League of China and State Forestry Administration.
The "Protecting Our Mother Rivers Campaign" started three years ago and hopes to get millions of young people to support China's six major forestry projects launched by Chinese Government early last year.
The projects include forest protection, planting trees, returning farmland to forest and grassland, and other nature projects.
A total of 60 million hectares of forest will be planted by the end of 2010, according to the programme.
Zhao Yong, a member of the secretariat of the committee, said Sunday that youth organizations at various levels should organize young people to attend the nationwide tree-planting campaign in the spring as well as other environmental protection activities.
The project's plan also calls for returning farmland to forests. About 100,000 families will do this each year over next nine years.
(China Daily March 25, 2002)
