Areas suffering from soil erosion in China stood at 3.56 million square kilometers in 2004, accounting for 37.1 percent of the country's total land areas, according to a report on the country's environmental status quo publicized by the State Environmental Protection Administration on Thursday.

All Chinese provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities had soil erosion problems, the report says.

Statistics show that by the end of 2004 China had 122.44 million hectares of arable land, 11.28 million hectares of garden plot, 253 million hectares of forest land and 262.7 million hectares of forage grass land, down by 0.77 percent, up 1.86 and 0.46 percent respectively and again down by 0.15 percent over the previous year.

By the end of last year, China had set up 2,194 natural reserves, covering an area of 148 million hectares. Of them, 226 were at national level, covering an area of 88.7 million hectares.

Source: Xinhua