China's Ministry of Environmental Protection has announced plans to build between 30 and 50 additional nature reserves across China during the 13th Five-Year Plan period (2016-2020).

According to a recently released plan, by 2020, China expects to guarantee its ecological space, improve the quality of its national ecology, strengthen ecological function, minimize biodiversity loss, improve unified regulations on ecological protection, and simultaneously continue to build a well-off society.

To achieve these primary targets, specific goals have been identified, including the standardized construction of 200 national reserves, and increased coverage of nature reserves to about 14.8 percent of the land area.