Tianchi Lake at Jianfengling National Forest Park in south China's Hainan Province. (Photo: VCG)

BEIJING, March 12 (Xinhua) -- China pushed ahead with its land-greening efforts in 2020, increasing the nation's forest coverage while strengthening the protection of both forests and grasslands, according to an official report.

Last year, 6.77 million hectares of forest was added, while 8.37 million hectares of forest was tended, said the report from the National Forestry and Grassland Administration.

China improved the ecology of 2.83 million hectares of grassland and carried out desertification prevention-and-control work on over 2.09 million hectares of land in the past year.

A total of 827,000 hectares of farmland was returned to forest or grassland, and more than 1.68 million hectares of pasture was rehabilitated, said the report.

The country also ramped up efforts to protect forest and grassland resources, restoring 1.97 million hectares of degraded forest and implementing grazing bans on 82 million hectares of grassland.