Beijing to expand green spaces, wetland

Beijing is set to get 2,300 more hectares of green space in the next five years, with municipal authorities planning new parks for areas vacated by businesses being pushed outside of the city.

Deng Naiping, head of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Landscape and Forestry, said on Tuesday that it will make green belts out of suburban land once occupied by markets and logistics centers, with these moved to neighboring Hebei Province to reduce traffic congestion and population density in the capital.

The capital will also make use of idle land to build 300 more small parks by 2020, Deng promised.

Meanwhile, Beijing will cooperate with Hebei Province and Tianjin Municipality on wetland construction.

By 2020, Beijing will have 3,000 hectares of wetland in the three suburban districts of Fangshan, Daxing and Tongzhou and 8,000 hectares of wetland recovered from the Yongding River, Chaobai River and Guanting Reservoir, Deng said. If the city reaches this target, it will have 54,400 hectares of wetland, accounting for 3.3 percent of the country's total.

Thirty forest parks and five national wetland parks will also be added by 2020, according to Deng.