2% of land to be used to protect wildlife, pristine areas

Giant Panda National Park will primarily protect giant pandas in their native habitat. Area: 27,100 sq km, including parts of Sichuan, Gansu and Shaanxi provinces.[Photo/Xinhua]

China is pushing forward the establishment of four national parks that would cover about 2 percent of the nation's territory to protect precious natural resources, including wildlife such as giant pandas, Siberian tigers and Tibetan antelopes, a senior official said on Monday.

Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, has personally reviewed plans for the four pilot national parks and required preservation of the integrity and original condition of the local ecological system, said Yang Weimin, deputy head of the Office of the Central Leading Group on Finance and Economic Affairs.

"The aim is to give about 215,000 square kilometers of land back to nature, to give roughly 2 percent of China's territory to giant pandas, Siberian tigers and Tibetan antelopes, and to give our future generations a larger area of pristine land," he said at a news conference on the sidelines of the 19th CPC National Congress.

"That's something unprecedented in the history of the Chinese nation."