Trees cover a hillside in Wuqi, Shaanxi province, the first county involved in the Conversion of Cropland to Forest and Grassland Program, in last June. (PHOTO / XINHUA)

China released a 15-year comprehensive plan for ecological system protection and recovery work, setting a target to improve the country's overall environment and achieve the goal of building a Beautiful China by 2035.

In the next 15 years, China will expand its forest coverage to 26 percent and have 75 percent of recoverable sandy land under control, according to the plan jointly released by the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Natural Resources.

Moreover, China will maintain 200 million hectares of natural forest and guarantee that 60 percent of its wetlands will be under protection, according to the plan.

In the next 15 years, China will expand its forest coverage to 26 percent and have 75 percent of recoverable sandy land under control

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The plan also aims to safeguard at least 35 percent of the country's natural coastlines and prevent the marine ecological condition from worsening.

China has made remarkable achievements to improve its ecological condition in the past decades. It has built 2,750 natural reserves covering 1.47 million square kilometers, which accounts for 15 percent of the country's total land area, according to the Ministry of Natural resources.

In August, the National Forestry and Grassland Administration announced that China's forest coverage had soared from 12 percent in the 1980s to 22.96 percent last year. In the area of the Three-North Shelterbelt Program alone, forest coverage rose from 5 percent in 1977 to 13 percent in 2017, reclaiming 336,000 sq km of desertified land.

However, there are still some challenges as the quality of its current ecological systems still needs to be improved and some regions are sacrificing the local environment to boost short-term economic growth, said Wu Xiao, director of NDRC's department in charge of agriculture and rural economy.

"We are also facing the great challenge of protecting the country's water resources, as well as its marine ecological system. A multiple solution system should be built with more involvement from new technology support," he said at a news conference on Thursday.

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"Ecology protection and recovery is comprehensive, long-term work. The plan will serve as a guide for related departments at all levels to make detailed plans. And all those efforts will lay a solid foundation for China to realize its goal of building a beautiful country," Wu said.

Under the plan, nine major ecological protection projects will be promoted in the next 15 years, covering many parts of the country, including the Yangtze River, the Yellow River, the forest area in Northeast China, the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.