Report reveals blooms of beautiful countryside

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China has made a solid start in its county-level campaign to build a beautiful countryside, with rural environments improving and green agricultural development advancing steadily, according to a think tank report published on Monday.

The report, titled Progress and Achievements in Building Beautiful Countryside in China, was compiled by the Research Center for Xi Jinping Thought on Ecological Civilization, China Daily and China Environment News.

It said that after the Ministry of Ecology and Environment and eight other national government bodies released an implementation plan for promoting the beautiful countryside initiative in early 2025, China has stepped up coordinated efforts to improve rural living environments, promote low-carbon agriculture and strengthen long-term governance mechanisms.

The plan set out four major tasks and 18 measures, with the goal of raising the proportion of counties that have realized the beautiful countryside initiative to 40 percent by 2027 and essentially accomplishing the program by 2035, the report said.

In order to meet the requirements of the initiative, counties must have good public infrastructure such as roads, public lighting and green spaces, sewage and wastewater treatment facilities, and age-friendly renovations.

By 2025, the national rural domestic sewage treatment rate had reached 55 percent, more than double the level at the end of the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20) period, it said. More than 5,000 large black and odorous rural water bodies on people's doorstep had been basically eliminated, with the treatment rate exceeding 98 percent.