The city of Harbin – the capital of China’s northernmost Heilongjiang province -- has made major progress in improving its environment over the past 19 years, according to a news conference held on the matter on June 18.

Officials released the results of an assessment report jointly conducted by the Harbin meteorological bureau and the Northeast China Satellite Meteorological Data Center, from 2000 to 2019, which showed that the city's push to go green during the period had improved significantly.

They said that since 2012, the vegetation ecological quality index has exceeded the average of nearly 20 years -- and that last year was the best in a 19-year period. Officials said that the ecological quality of the vegetation in Shangzhi city, Wuchang city and Tonghe county ranked in the top three of all counties and county-level cities administered by Harbin.

Officials said that monitoring and analysis had shown that the city’s vegetation ecological quality index had increased markedly in the past decade.

Last year, according to the data, there was abundant rainfall, good light and heat conditions. This saw the vegetation ecological quality index increasing by 15.7 percent on the average of the past 19 years and 27.3 percent above the year 2000 -- the highest growth rate and the best performance in the past 19 years.

Officials told the news conference that in the past 19 years, the environment in Harbin has shown an overall upward trend and the areas showing an improvement accounted for 97.1 percent of the city’s overall area.

They said that the biggest improvements had been in the eastern and western agricultural areas of Harbin.

Officials said that the improvement indexes of Shuangcheng, Bayan, Acheng, Binxian and Yilan were higher than the average for the overall city.

They added that the areas with the biggest gains in going green in the city were mainly located in the forest areas in the east, southeast, middle and north. They said this was due to progress being made in returning farmland to forests and afforestation in these areas.