Guangxi has built China's largest production bases featuring timber, artificial boards, forest chemical products, and forestry-pulp-paper integration, said Cai Zhongping, director of the Forestry Bureau of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, during an Oct 9 press conference.

The accumulative afforestation area of Guangxi in the past decade reached 3 million mu (200,000 hectares) and the region's annual timber yield increased from 21 million cubic meters in 2012 to 39 million cu m in 2021. It produced nearly half of the timber in China, despite its forest area only accounting for 5 percent of the country's total.

Cai said that Guangxi has been devoting continuous efforts in safeguarding the ecological barrier in South China and has topped China in terms of its degree of forest ecological improvement.

The region has been adhering to the development concept of using green industries to enrich people's lives, formulating engines for green development. Its annual forestry industrial output value jumped from fifth place nationally in 2015 to second place in 2021.

During the 13th Five-Year Plan period (2016-20), 44 counties receiving support for rural vitalization experienced an average annual growth of more than 10 percent in forestry industrial output value.

A total of 64,000 people have been hired as forest rangers, receiving over 8,000 yuan ($1,114) in additional income annually. The forestry industry in Guangxi has directly lifted more than 600,000 people out of poverty and helped 1.2 million people who have just been lifted out of poverty stabilize their income.