China allocated 19.93 billion yuan (around 2.75 billion U.S. dollars) in 2024 to tackle soil erosion, targeting 19,500 square kilometers of affected land, thereby raising the national soil-water conservation rate to 72.83 percent, China's Ministry of Water Resources said recently.
The ministry said that China has made significant progress in soil and water conservation, recovering a total of 64,000 square kilometers of eroded land nationwide.
Soil-water conservation rate refers to the proportion of areas with good soil-water conditions to the total land area of a country.
The 72.83 percent soil conservation rate, up from from 72.56 percent in 2023, reflects improved management of soil and water resources nationwide, said the ministry.
China enhances efforts to combat soil erosion
China's Shenzhou-23 crewed spaceship blasted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the country's northwest on Sunday, sending three astronauts to its orbiting space station.
The spaceship, atop a Long March-2F carrier rocket, lifted off from the launch site at 23:08 Beijing Time (15:08 GMT).
The crew members consist of mission commander Zhu Yangzhu, and fellow astronauts Zhang Zhiyuan and Lai Ka-ying, who is also the first astronaut from China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
In another notable first, one of the crew members is set to undertake a year-long stay aboard the space station, double the usual duration of previous Shenzhou missions.
After entering orbit, the Shenzhou-23 spaceship will perform a fast automated rendezvous and docking with the radial port of the space station core module Tianhe, forming a combination of three modules and three spacecraft.
Shenzhou-23 marks the 40th flight of China's manned spaceflight program and the seventh manned flight mission since the Tiangong space station entered its application and development phase in late 2022.
China launches Shenzhou-23 manned spaceship
