Daqing Mountain in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

In recent years, Hohhot city in North China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region has set its sights on green and low-carbon initiatives, fostering innovative thinking and pathways.

As a result, steady progress has been made in green development, leading to significant changes in environmental protection and ecological construction.

In the summer of 2023, the city's university students caused a sensation by climbing Daqing Mountain to watch the sunrise. As they ascended, they witnessed the lush greenery below and admired the city's neon lights in the distance.

The lush beauty of Daqing Mountain is a fruitful result of the comprehensive ecological management project on the front slope of the mountain. As a national forest city, Hohhot has carried out large-scale national land greening actions. These actions rely on key national ecological projects, such as the shelter forest programs, the natural forest protection project, the returning farmland to forest project, and the Beijing-Tianjin sand source control project. These efforts continuously enhance the natural ecology and fortify ecological security barriers.

The city has established the first batch of national natural grassland parks – the Chilechuan National Grassland Nature Park (pilot) and the region's first smart forest and grassland ecological big data platform and plant germplasm resource library. The area of sandy land in the city has continued to decrease, while the forest coverage and vegetation growth in grasslands have continued to increase.