The momentum gathered after Ma Huiling, a National People’s Congress (NPC) delegate, submitted a proposal at the “two sessions” political meetings earlier this month, urging authorities to investigate the changes in grassland areas in the latest national land survey. Ma, also a professor of grassland science at Gansu Agricultural University, suggested involving different ministries, as well as academics, farmers, and herders, to investigate the grassland resources.
Results from the third national land survey published last August showed that China had an estimated 264.5 million hectares of grassland, including 213 million hectares of natural grassland. The steep decline from the previously widely-recognized figure of 400 million hectares of grassland in the 1980s has raised eyebrows among Chinese experts, who are now questioning the accuracy of the new statistics.
