China’s relentless push for greenery has paid off spectacularly, crowning it the global leader in both scale and speed of forest expansion. Fresh figures from the National Forestry and Grassland Administration show forest lands reaching 3.614 billion mu, a testament to visionary planning and execution.
In the 14th Five-Year Plan era, 185 million mu were afforested – roughly the footprint of Fujian province – marking China as the top performer in planetary greening. Peking University’s 2025 research, spearheaded by Guo Qinghua, utilized drones, LiDAR, and AI across 76,000 plots to estimate 142.6 billion trees by 2020, or 100 per person. This metric personalizes China’s green legacy, blending safeguarded woods with new plantations.
Since 2012, over 1.1 billion mu (73.3 million hectares) have been transformed, supplying 25% of new global forests. The FAO’s Global Forest Resources Assessment 2025 confirms China’s average annual addition of 1.69 million hectares between 2015 and 2025, the highest worldwide.
Beyond numbers, this surge enhances carbon sequestration, wildlife habitats, and soil health, vital for tackling climate change. China’s playbook – from grassroots tree-planting to satellite oversight – sets a high bar, urging other countries to scale up their own restoration ambitions for a greener future.