 I'm Xie Chen from China State Forestry Administration. I'm working for Forestry Economics and Policy Analysis. In China, there's a long history of forest restoration, even when China was just liberated in the 1950s. At that time, the eastern part of China, especially in the Yellow River, the old Yellow River part, the sandstorm was very strong and farmers destroyed farmers' houses and farmland. So even at that time, when China was very poor, we already started forest restoration like a short belt intercropping into the cropland to reduce the natural disaster to protecting farmland, to help farmers to gain more agriculture output. That's the early stage. When China opened to the outside world and the reform, we immediately started the three-nose short belt program. It occupied almost one-fifth of China. We called it Green-Grid War. The program lasted from the late 1990s until 2020. So it's a giant forest restoration program in China. In the late 1990s, when China's economy developed very rapidly and deforestation happened everywhere and it caused soil erosion, water-soil erosion in the Yellow River and also flooding. So in 1998, there was a big flooding in the Yellow River and caused a lot of life loss in China. So the Chinese government started to launch several national-level key forest programs. One is the Natural Forest Protection Program. We also called it Logging Band. The second one I involved in is the conversion of cropland to forest programs. The conversion of cropland to forest programs started in 1999. It's the first round of that program. It started from 1999 until 2016, this year. And the second round of that has started in 2014. It will last until 2020. So the goal of the program, one is for ecological restoration to combine the desertification in the northern part of China and to reduce water-severe water-soil erosion and to increase land productivity around the area. And also, poverty alleviation is a very important part of that program. At the very beginning, because the CCP is the top priority is to reduce water-soil erosion to the ecological purpose is the main target. But literally we found if we don't provide to improve farmers' livelihood then farmers won't maintain and care about trees. So we immediately, after we started the program to have many policy approaches to help farmers to increase their livelihood and provide subsidies to them. And that's one hand. That's the main policies from the beginning until now. And also, in the second phase of the first round that started from 2008 until this year we also started like a sub-project under the CCP like energy, rural energy, infrastructure and improve the crop and productivity, something like that. The main purpose of that is to strengthen the development capacity of the farmers and also rural livelihood. Because China is a historical and agricultural civilization country for thousands of years, our farmers used to cutting down forestry and to do agriculture there for thousands of years. It's like that. But since the CCP, we convert the cut-down degraded forest land especially the steep slope land. Actually, the steep slope crop lands previously are forestry. So in Chinese history, this is the first time Chinese government provides subsidies for farmers to convert their crop land to forestry. And also in Chinese thousands of years' history farmers always have to be levied. Sometimes very heavy, levied tax to submit to government. But this time, government provides money to farmers themselves to reforestation. So that's a big milestone in Chinese history. I think that's very important. I think it's unique in the world. We set up a very strict financial arrangement or institutional arrangement. That means all the money, all the subsidies were directly we call it a special money channel directly from the money directly from the Ministry of Finance to each of farmers' bank accounts. Each of CCP farmers will have their own bank account to receive the money. I had to say that bank account is not only for CCP. Other agricultural subsidies also goes to that bank. For sure, because if you have a chance to visit our CCP farmers, they really appreciate it. They get money and they see their village change a lot. Trees, the village become green and the water become clean. They told us something like that. Yeah, change a lot. At the very beginning, I don't believe that actually farmers always concern their short income returns because the program already lasted so many years and they do see the changes of the environmental change. The milestone is the first time farmers got money from government. Before that, they always submit money to the government. So at the very beginning, a lot of farmers don't believe that. So at the initial stage all the participants of the CCP are the leaders of the village leaders and they have to take it as a task to be finished but gradually the farmers see that they really got money from government. So more and more they are happy to involve in. And some of the places, especially in a very remote part of China like Guizhou and there are places like Bijie. Now the land is very harsh and all the land is steep like 60, 40 degrees, even more than that. There was serious land use degradation but none of the land has become CCP. But this time, for the second round they are the largest part of the program. The farmers are very happy to participate. I think technical support is a very important part of CCP's success. As I told you before, our local foresters are very good and at the very beginning they just use their hands and use old techniques. But right now China is quite good, not quite good compared with the US and still a little bit advanced to use G's to use land planning. So at the second round of CCP we will require that the CCP land use planning must be used G's and each of the plots of the household has to be four G's points. So it's a huge job work but I visited a very remote county. It's a Tibetan county, very remote near the angle of Yunnan province. I saw that the picture, I can show you that. It's extremely surprised me. Each of the plots has G's position with their bank account in that and farmers' stamp, farmers' finger stamp on that is really surprising. Coming to Ethiopia actually is my long design because years ago I read about literature about a plantation in Asia, in Africa. I know that in Ethiopia they also have a small holder, the forest station and the landscape and the temperature is quite similar. Semi dried and dried in China. So I think before I come here I read some history about Ethiopia. I found that even the institutional structure may have some similar. So I do expect we can exchange a lot of things especially through yesterday's discussion. We have many things in common and we can share knowledge and learn a lot. Several things. One is the small holder's role in forest restoration and land tenure and land tenure arrangement. Even it is more difficult, different with China and also conflict between agriculture and forestry and also the incentives. Maybe they lack incentives from the Chinese experience and also bamboo. I think bamboo is a great potential for China and Ethiopia to cooperate. As I know that FAO recently received huge money from the Chinese government that money was mainly used for soft soft cooperation. So I will try to help to contact some of our FAO. From her presentation I can see there is a long history between Ethiopia and China and bamboo technical cooperation. But for economic and policy exchanges still not started. So I think there is great potential to see how the technical apply to Ethiopia and to help to not only technical one but also marketing and something like that. Yeah, in China the tenure system is how to say after the reform. It's quite good I think. For crop land, it's farmer have very clear land and for forestry we start also start we call it collective forest tenure reform and from that reform the previous owned collective, I mean the village or township owned forest has been delivered to each of the households. So farmers do have some incentives to involve in forestry management. Yeah, currently it's quite good. Yeah, but it's different with crop. In China forestry always had two function, one is economic and another is ecological. So we have a very strict forest management laws and regulations especially concerned about forest management we have very strict laws especially for harvesting. We have a quarter, national quarter for harvesting timber. So for instance, but we divided forest into two groups. One is that we call it ecological function forest and another is commercial forest. Previously both of them has been strictly under the harvesting quarter but right now we released, relaxed the commercial part. We issued several policies trying to help farmers to have more autonomy to cutting the trees, something like that. But still it's an argument. I think their forest land is also owned by government. One thing we can learn is to have a certificate for forest land maybe not ownership but certificate to use that land for long period of time for instance 60 years, even 70 years then farmers may have a more secured land tenure sense. They may have incentive to involve in. For the first round of CSFP we have a very strict requirement for 80% must be ecological trees and 20% economic trees. But between, we designed, especially designed for CSFP we call it double. Double the trees like chestnut, we call it ecological trees. Bamboo is also we call it ecological. There are some flexibility. But for the second round of CSFP, farmers can choose what they prefer to plant. If the place is good for fruit trees, farmers can prove. But for the higher and very low yield of the crop soil, farmers will automatically choose for ecological trees. In bamboo forestry it's very important. We really regard it as forestry. It's especially concerned about ecological impacts. So we encourage, even in CSFP some of the places suitable for bamboo. Bamboo is part of our CSFP plantation. There is no problem. Do you think it's a good way to help forest landscape restoration bamboo? Yes, especially for the ecological purpose. It can stable the soil. For China the forestry, even though we developed very fast but we still have several challenges. One thing is for the technical part of that, most of the forestry is monoculture. So we need to improve that in many, many ways to diversify our forestry. So that's the one challenge. Another is for CSFP also. Because the first round of CSFP already finished this year, the subsidies. So some of the farmers already go back to their previous land use to cut down the trees and to crop again. But it's not so big, I think. The places normally have a higher yield of crop near urban. So the land value is much higher than forestry. It's not common, but really we need to adjust or maybe postpone the policy. That's one thing for CSFP. The third one I think is because of the urbanization, the young rural people move to the city. Most of the forests, no one takes care of that. Even abandoned forestry, no lack of management. And even the trees there, nobody could have capacity to cut it down. And also even some agricultural land has been abandoned. Yes, I think maybe through this discussion we can learn from Nepal, Ethiopia, their way, I think, the most valuable thing is their participatory approach. In China we also know the participatory approach, but we are used to the top-down and right-down we combine these two together. I'm very happy to be CFO's project because I'm a researcher closely linked with policy makers. So I can quickly know the inside of the policy. At the same time I can, as much as broadly, to accept the academic way of the research and quickly mix and transit between the two. So that's both benefit for China and also possible. That's what I want to see. Yes, right now I'm just starting to design the second round-up CSFP monitoring framework which I will use the experience of our first round. We will make monitoring more accurate. For instance, we will combine the ecological and the economic monitoring together. And also we will control groups so we can provide more accurate policy advice to the government.