Initiative tasks nation's rural counties with improving infrastructure, expanding green development

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.

The report said the campaign had benefited some 9.72 million people across 30 provincial-level regions, 860 counties and more than 4,100 administrative villages. It also noted that remediated water bodies were checked through unannounced inspections, remote sensing and water quality monitoring.

Rural waste collection and disposal systems have also been improved. The report said the proportion of administrative villages covered by systems in which villages collect waste, townships transfer it and counties process it has remained above 90 percent.

Green agricultural development has gained momentum, it said. The comprehensive utilization rate of livestock and poultry manure reached 80.1 percent in 2025, while the comprehensive utilization rate of crop straw stayed above 88 percent. The disposal rate of agricultural film exceeded 85 percent, helping curb plastic pollution in key farming areas.

The report also highlighted progress in soil and water conservation. In 2025, China treated 11,500 square kilometers of soil erosion, restored 4,666 erosion gullies in the fertile black soil region of Northeast China and built 634 ecologically clean small watersheds. The national soil and water conservation rate reached 73.09 percent.

County-level implementation has become a key feature of the campaign, the report said. So far, 600 agricultural county-level areas have completed the beautiful countryside initiative, bringing the national completion rate to 20.9 percent. Twenty-three key counties have been selected as pilot areas under the Beautiful China initiative.

The report said public participation and assessment mechanisms are being strengthened. More than 4,000 sites have been evaluated, some 45,000 villagers interviewed and public satisfaction has reached more than 90 percent. Authorities have also handled over 2,300 public complaints through a closed-loop mechanism covering clue collection, data analysis, supervision and rectification.

It said beautiful countryside construction is an important part of China's rural vitalization strategy and Beautiful China initiative, helping shift villages from being merely clean and orderly toward being ecologically livable.

China is set to continue to improve rural environmental governance, promote green and low-carbon agriculture, enhance village appearance and strengthen farmer participation, the report said. The country will also work toward raising the county-level completion rate to 55 percent by the end of the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30) period and basically completing the beautiful countryside initiative by 2035.

Wuyishan, a county-level city in Fujian province, has turned strengthened ecological protection into a driver of rural vitalization, helping villages near a World Heritage Site and national park move beyond the old dilemma of "living poorly beside rich natural resources".

The city, home to 115 administrative villages and 89,000 rural residents, is the only one in China with both UNESCO World Cultural and Natural Heritage status and a national park. Local authorities have placed conservation first while developing tea, tourism, bamboo and water-related industries.

A 4,252-square-kilometer buffer zone has been designated around Wuyishan National Park to protect the core area through differentiated management. The city also spends more than 42 million yuan ($6.2 million) a year on ecological compensation and has invested 66.65 million yuan to buy back 1,200 hectares of commercial forest in key ecological areas.

The proportion of water bodies rated Grade II or better in terms of water quality has remained at 100 percent for the past three years, while the city's forest coverage stands at 80.5 percent and the share of days with good air quality has reached 100 percent. Since 2015, when the national park pilot program began, 44 new species have been recorded.

China has a five-tier quality system for surface water, with Grade I the best. Water at Grade III quality is considered good enough for most aquatic organisms to live in.

Green farming has also expanded. Wuyishan has built 8,840 hectares of eco-friendly tea gardens, accounting for 90 percent of its tea plantations, and sediment loss from tea gardens has fallen by more than 45 percent. Rural sewage treatment rose from 69.1 percent in 2022 to 98.2 percent in 2025.

In 2025, the city received 17.56 million tourist visits and generated 26.21 billion yuan in tourism revenue, while its tea industry chain reached 15 billion yuan in output value.

Laoshan district in Qingdao, Shandong province, has used integrated urban-rural planning to transform once underdeveloped coastal and mountain villages into cleaner, wealthier communities supported by tourism, tea, fruit and modern services.

Thirty years ago, many villages in the district sustained themselves on traditional farming, fishing and quarrying. Infrastructure was weak, and domestic sewage and waste were often discharged without effective treatment. Today, Laoshan has built a model that extends urban public services into rural areas while protecting its mountain and coastal ecology.

The district, with 95.7 kilometers of coastline and a natural coastline retention rate of 73.7 percent, began rural water supply, environmental improvement and road projects in 2005. It launched integrated urban-rural sanitation in 2014 and rural sewage treatment in 2018.

From 2019 to 2025, Laoshan built more than 1,600 km of sewage pipelines, 42 sewage treatment stations and 62 pumping stations, achieving countywide rural sewage treatment. Rural black and odorous water bodies have been cleared, while harmless treatment and classified collection of rural household waste have both reached 100 percent.

The district has also promoted circular agriculture. Since 2010, organic fertilizers and physical pest-control equipment have been distributed to more than 19,000 tea and fruit growers, covering over 2,000 hectares. In the past three years, soil organic matter in farmland rose by 34 percent, while chemical fertilizer and pesticide use fell by 6 percent and 13 percent, respectively.

Green industries have brought visible income gains. In the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) period, the average collective income of villages reached 8.82 million yuan ($1.3 million), and 80 percent of villages earned more than 1 million yuan. Rural residents' per capita disposable income rose from 31,000 yuan in 2022 to 36,000 yuan in 2025.

Meitan county in Guizhou province has built a rural vitalization model centered on tea, turning former barren hills into plantations, production bases into scenic areas, and a traditional agricultural county into one of China's leading tea-growing regions.

The county, which administers 137 villages and communities with a total rural population of 161,300, once faced poor rural living conditions, weak infrastructure and limited sources of income. Through long-term planning, environmental improvement and tea-led industrial upgrading, it has reshaped both its countryside and economy.

Meitan's tea plantation area has expanded from 1,866.7 hectares decades ago to 40,000 hectares today. The industry now benefits 88,000 farming households and more than 351,000 people, and contributes to over half of rural residents' per capita disposable income. In 2025, rural per capita disposable income reached 23,000 yuan ($3,392), 37 percent higher than the Guizhou provincial average.

Environmental improvements have accompanied industrial growth. Rural domestic sewage treatment has reached 100 percent, rural household sanitary toilet coverage exceeds 95 percent, and waste collection facilities cover 94.6 percent of rural areas. Water quality at 82 rural stream monitoring sections is rated at or above Grade III, with no black and odorous water bodies reported.

The county has also preserved regional rural architecture by building more than 100,000 traditional houses in the architectural style of northern Guizhou, improving rural living conditions for over 98 percent of households. It was also among the first in Guizhou to achieve paved-road access for all administrative villages.

Tea has become the core of Meitan's green economy. In 2025, the county produced 80,000 metric tons of tea, with tea output value reaching 6.45 billion yuan and comprehensive tea-related revenue hitting 18.61 billion yuan.