In April 2001, in order to implement the strategic decision made by the
Central Military Commission, which required the armed forces to participate in
and support the development in western regions of China, the Beijing Military
Area Command (MAC) enacted and issued the Ecological Construction Project of the
Beijing Military Area Command in the 10th Five-year Plan Period. Over
the past four years, the military area command has dispatched a total of over
two million persons/times, 76,000 vehicles and equipment and changed 2.55
million mu of sandlot into forests or grasslands, gaining good ecological and
social benefits.
In the year of 2002, the military area command invested over 1.2 million
yuan, mobilized 540, 000 troops/times and 16,000 vehicles and machines to start
the ecological construction project in full gear. Next year, the Environmental
Protection and Afforestation Committee of the PLA held an on-the-spot
afforestation mobilization meeting in an artillery shooting range of the Beijing
MAC. After the meeting, the military area command invested over 2.6 million
yuan, mobilized 670, 000 troops/times and 12, 000 vehicles/times to accomplish
the task of the year with flying colors.
Over the past four years, all the units of the military area command have
launched one upsurge after another to improve the ecological environment within
a vast region of north China from the Taihang Mountain in the south to the
Hulunbuir Grass in the north and from Alxa in the west to the Yanshan Mountain
and the Bohai Sea in the east.
Huangyangtan, the locality of an artillery shooting range, is 90 km away
from Beijing and is one of the sources of sandstorms hitting Beijing. In order
to improve the ecological environment there, the Beijing MAC has invested 500,
000 persons/times, millions of yuan of fund to plant trees and grow grass
totalling75,000 mu. The forest coverage has increased from 0.08% at the
beginning of building the shooting range to the present 62.5%. A coordinated
tactics-drilling base of the military area command and a drilling base of a unit
have invested large amount of manpower and material to afforestation. Now the
barren hills and wastelands in the past have taken on a new green look and the
forest and grass survival rate reached 90% and above. The Hongshan Military
Horse Ranch has adopted such comprehensive harnessing measures as enclosing
pastures where herding horse is forbidden, while growing trees and grass on
these pastures to recover the deteriorated grassland. The National Afforestation
Committee and the Environmental Protection and Afforestation Committee of the
PLA have named the Hongshan Military Horse Ranch as the “Demonstration Base in
Ecological Construction” of the state and the army.
The troops of the Beijing MAC has established 100 obligatory afforestation
bases and a batch of demonstration bases with the Daqingshan Tree-planting Base
in the Inner Mongolia Military Command as the representative. The Beijing MAC is
striving to basically accomplish the major tasks of the “Ecological Project” by
the end of the next year.
By Liu Jianjun and Li Zhenshan
(Apr. 01, PLA Daily)