A conference was held in Beijing on Sunday to mark the International Day for Biological Diversity and the 60th anniversary of the initiation of nature reserves in China.
Han Qide, vice chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, hailed nature reserves as important means of boosting biodiversity and keeping China beautiful.
He called on authorities to come up with better laws and increase investment and international cooperation so as to better protect nature reserves.
Dinghushan, China's first nature reserve, was established in Zhaoqing of south China's Guangdong Province in 1956.
According to official statistics, China had established 2,729 nature reserves covering a combined area of 1.47 million square km, about 15 percent of the country's total land area, by the end of 2015.
