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China and Japan have launched a joint afforestation program with the goal of planting forests over 10,000 to 20,000 hectares in 10 years along China's Yellow River.

The Central Committee of the Communist Youth League of China (CYLC) and the Japan-China Parliamentary League for Tree-planting will implement the program in 2003-2012.

Zhou Qiang, first secretary of the Secretariat of the CYLC Central Committee, and Kamei Shizuka, president of the Japan-China Parliamentary League for Tree-planting, signed an agreement on the cooperative undertaking in Beijing recently.

The Japanese league will fund the tree-planting in the Yellow River valley areas in Shaanxi, Shanxi and Henan provinces, which are vulnerable to soil erosion due to lack of vegetation.

The afforestation work will be conducted under the framework of a national green project initiated by the CYLC Central Committee, which mobilizes millions of young Chinese to plant trees and help improve the environment in major river areas such as the Yangtze and the Yellow Rivers.

Xu Jialu, vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, said the program would not only benefit Sino-Japanese cooperation on environmental protection, but would also promote friendly relations among the two countries' young people.