Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday stressed the importance of afforestation and urged people, especially the young, to understand and protect nature via tree planting activities.

Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, made the remarks while visiting east Beijing’s Chaoyang District and planting saplings of different types of trees.

Other top leaders, including Zhang Dejiang, Yu Zhengsheng, Liu Yunshan, Wang Qishan and Zhang Gaoli, also attended the activity.

Xi called for cultivating awareness about loving nature and treasuring lives, and learning about green development.

“Planting trees now will benefit our future generations, and we should roll up our sleeves to plant more trees year after year, generation after generation,” Xi said.

Xi planted trees on an area covering more than 13 hectares in Beijing’s first greenbelt region. The area used to be a village. In October 2015, villagers were relocated and the land was left for afforestation.

Xi said China has a tradition of planting trees around Qingming Festival, which falls on April 4 this year.

The festival is one of the 24 seasonal division points in China, usually falling on April 4-6 each year. After the festival, the temperature rises and rainfall increases. It is the high time for spring plowing and sowing.

Volunteer tree planting by all citizens is important for raising ecological awareness and creating consensus and synergy in promoting ecological protection, Xi said.

Xi urged school children around the nation to foster awareness about environmental protection starting in childhood, encouraging them to plant trees with their hands for the motherland and a beautiful world.

While acknowledging progress in the afforestation drive over recent years, Xi said the country is still not green enough.

“We should keep on working,” he said.

Xi urged Party committees and governments at all levels to coordinate management of mountains, waters, forests and farmland, speed up integrating the afforestation of urban and rural areas, increase afforested areas, and improve the quality of forests.

Xi stressed that it is every citizen’s statutory duty to participate in tree planting, and leaders at all levels should set an example in this regard.

China unveiled an environmental plan on Wednesday to curb air pollution in its northern region, which constantly suffers smog in the winter.

Twenty-eight cities in and around the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region are being put under tighter restrictions on processing and production in the coal, cement, steel and other industries that cause high levels of air pollution, according to an action plan.

The plan, jointly issued by the Ministry of Environmental Protection, Ministry of Finance, National Development and Reform Commission, National Energy Bureau and six provincial-level governments, was made public on Wednesday.

Under the plan, all the cement and casting plants will have to suspend production during the heating season from Nov 15 to March 15, except those providing heating services and processing dangerous waste in 28 cities in the region and the three neighboring provinces of Shandong, Shanxi and Henan.

All the coal-fired power plants in these cities will be shut down if they fail to reach low emission standards by the end of October, the plan says.

In addition, producers must cut aluminum capacity and production of electrolytic aluminum by more than 30 percent across the 28 cities in winter, and some cities like Shijiazhuang and Tangshan in Hebei province, China’s top steel-producing province, will have to cut their iron and steel output in half.

Chen Jining, minister of environmental protection, said at a news conference earlier this month that fighting air pollution in winter in North China has become the priority in the country’s smog-control efforts.

The plan also requires transporting coal by trucks in Tianjin, Hebei and other ports around Bohai Bay to end before October to reduce emissions. Instead, railway transportation is encouraged.

Some other tasks, such as improving emission standards, vehicle exhausts, dust controls and improving emergency responses against smog, also are included in the plan.

These strict measures come in a bid to meet the air-quality improvement goals set in the nation’s Action Plan of Air Pollution Control and Prevention, which says Beijing should lower the annual average concentration of PM2.5 — hazardous fine particulate matter — to 60 micrograms per cubic meter by the end of 2017. The level in 2016 in Beijing was 73.

“The new plan is very comprehensive and strict, and it includes temporary measures and long-term measures, such as upgrading gas quality,” said Chang Jiwen, an expert in environmental policies with the State Council Development Research Center.

Yuanwang space tracking ships, which follows the progress of satellites and other space-bound craft, will carry out 19 maritime space monitoring missions in 2017, according to the maritime satellite measurement and control authority on Wednesday.

Yuanwang-5 left port Wednesday and Yuanwang-6 started its journey Monday.

Yuanwang-7 and the rocket transporting fleet will set sail in April.

In 2016, Yuanwang ships completed 14 major scientific research and experiment tasks, including maiden flights of the Long March-7 and the Long March-5, and space journeys of the Tiangong-2 space lab and the Shenzhou-11 manned spacecraft.

A resident of Taiwan, Lee Ming-che, is under investigation for being suspected of endangering national security, a Chinese mainland official said Wednesday.

Developments of the investigation, in line with judicial process, will be disclosed in a timely fashion, Ma Xiaoguang, spokesperson for the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, told a press conference.

The mainland will protect the legitimate rights and interests of all residents of Taiwan who come to the mainland, as long as they abide by the regulations and laws, said Ma.

Shanghai court sentences man for stealing shared bike. [Photo/Xinhua]

A man has been sentenced to four months for stealing a bike in Shanghai. The convict surnamed Tao stole the bicycle of a bike-sharing company from the roadside and carried it home on a tricycle where he used a saw to cut the lock on Dec 25. The shared bike was valued at 2,265 yuan ($329.31).

The Jinshan District People’s Court sentenced him for four months with five-month probation and fined him 2,000 yuan.

Tao, who was summoned by police on Dec. 28, confessed to his crime. “It’s all because of greed. I saw that the bike was parked on the side of the road for nearly 15 days and I decided to take it home,” he said.

In December, Shanghai Minhang District People’s Court sentenced a man surnamed Han for three months with three-month probation and a fine of 1,000 yuan for stealing a shared bike in September.

In Xiamen, a woman was ordered 10 days detention for painting a yellow shared bike blue in an effort to hide its ownership and keep it illegally.