China now has more than 220 million hectares of forest, with the forest coverage rate standing at 23.04 percent, a People’s Daily reporter learned from a high-level conference on forestry cooperation between China and the Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries, which was held Wednesday via video link.

Aerial photo taken on June 2, 2021 shows the scenery of a national forest park in Yichun, northeast China's Heilongjiang Province. (Photo: Xinhua)

The forest stock volume of China is 17.56 billion cubic meters. In 2020, the country completed a total of 6.77 million hectares of afforestation and forest restoration.

Since the launch of the China-CEEC coordination mechanism on forestry cooperation in May 2016, the countries have conducted cooperation in the fields of policy dialogue, research, education, forest products trade and investment.

From 2016 to 2019, the total trade volume of forest products between China and CEE countries grew from $1.37 billion to $2.4 billion, with an average annual growth rate of 20.5 percent.

(Compiled by Jia Qingqian)