Protecting the national parks and the world heritage sites in China: challenge and strategy

About 70% of its land area as mountains and plateaus, China is the largest mountain country in the world. Thanks to its vast territory (9.6 million km2), outstanding relief and varied climates, China boasts extremely plenty of ecosystems and landscapes. From south to north, it traverses almost all the temporal zones from tropical rainforest in the southernmost to frigid-temperate needle-leaved forest in the northernmost; from east to west, it sees a gradual transition fro humid forest landscape to extremely arid desert landscape; vertical change of landscapes is most striking owing to the existence of many high mountains (above 6000–7000 m, e.g., the Himalayas, the Kunlun, the Tianshan, the Hengduan, etc.) and plateaus, especially the immense Tibetan Plateau (averagely 4500 m above sea level). All of this give rise to the richness and diversity of ecosystems and landscape in China. Some of the ecosystems are endemic to China, e.g., alpine desert and alpine steppe in the Tibetan Plateau. As a result, China bears a great responsibility in the protection of global ecosystems and landscape.