China is shifting its afforestation strategy from quantity to quality, leveraging digital technology and artificial intelligence to maximize ecological gains as the nation marks its 48th National Tree Planting Day on Thursday.
Official data released on Thursday shows China's total forest area has now exceeded 2.4 billion hectares, with forest coverage rising to over 25 percent and forest stock volume approaching 21 billion cubic meters, according to the National Forestry and Grassland Administration.
The country now has approximately 142.6 billion trees, averaging 100 per person, the data showed.
As the world's fastest and largest contributor to global greening, China accounts for one-quarter of the planet's newly added vegetation area. These figures are not rough estimates but precise measurements derived from an integrated "sky-air-ground" technological system.
At the Chinese Academy of Forestry's Artificial Intelligence and Visualization Laboratory in Beijing, a digital command center is revolutionizing how the country approaches tree planting.
Researchers can now conduct virtual tours through digital forests and, crucially, provide real-time scientific guidance for ongoing planting activities using a digital twin visualization system.
The application of these high-tech methods will help meet the goals outlined in China's 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-2030), a key blueprint mapping out the country's development priorities for the coming years.
"Using AI technology allows us to know exactly where forests have been planted, how much area they cover, and assess their quality. This ensures every investment achieves maximum benefits. This aligns with the 15th Five-Year Plan's requirements for developing new quality productive forces, promoting digital empowerment across all sectors, and driving green development through technological innovation," said Yang Tingdong, associate research fellow at the Research Institute of Forest Resource Information Techniques of the Chinese Academy of Forestry.
Last year, the output value of China's forestry and grassland industry reached nearly 11 trillion yuan (about 1.6 trillion U.S. dollars), according to a report released on Thursday by the National Greening Commission.
The report also showed that ecotourism remained popular across China, with over 3 billion trips recorded in 2025.
China's AI-powered "digital forest" boosts greening efforts as country marks tree planting day
Smart technologies have reshaped China's ecological and environmental monitoring system, Huang Runqiu, minister of Ecology and Environment, said Thursday in Beijing on the sidelines of the fourth session of the 14th National People's Congress(NPC).
"Regarding ecological and environmental monitoring, we have been promoting the digitalization, informatization, and intelligentization of the entire monitoring process in recent years, reshaping the ecological and environmental monitoring system. For instance, in water environment monitoring and sampling, we have used intelligent drones which can quickly locate sampling points, collect samples accurately, return rapidly, and they are safe and reliable, improving work efficiency by over 70 percent. They are particularly advantageous for sampling during flood seasons and in remote areas," Huang told the press.
"In terms of environmental sample analysis, we have developed 'lights-out laboratories' in recent years. As the name suggests, these labs operate without lights and are unattended. Through robotic arms, robots, and intelligent management systems, they achieve full-process automation and intelligence from sample handover, testing, and analysis to report generation. This has significantly enhanced work efficiency, increasing it by more than eightfold compared to traditional labs. More importantly, it reduces human interference, human error, and even data falsification," he said.
Thanks to the improved ecological and environmental supervision capabilities, the number of environmental violation cases nationwide has decreased from 130,000 five years ago to 43,000 last year, representing a decline of 68 percent, Huang said.
The minister said China has already applied environmental DNA technology in the biodiversity monitoring work.
"In the field of biodiversity monitoring, monitoring aquatic organisms remains a weak point. However, significant progress has been made in recent years as we have developed environmental DNA technology. Although this chip is very small in size, it contains DNA detection information for aquatic organisms, including the finless porpoise and the Chinese sucker, from 19 state-controlled sections in the Jiangsu segment of the Yangtze River. The results showed that over the past five years, more than 20 species of aquatic organisms have increased in this river section, fully demonstrating the tangible effectiveness of the ten-year fishing ban in the Yangtze River," Huang said while showing a chip to reporters.
The 14th NPC, China's national legislature, concluded its fourth session on Thursday.
Smart technologies reshape China's ecological, environmental monitoring system: minister
