Protecting China's Ecological Environment is one of the Book Series of China's National Conditions and provides a brief introduction to China's actions to protect its ecological environment. China has a vast area of about 9.6 million square kilometres and ranks No. 3, next only to Russia and Canada, in the world. Having complex climatic, topographic and natural conditions and scarce arable land area, it faces a bigger challenge in environ-mental protection. Since the opening-up and reform in1978, the government has put great stress on environ-mental protection and engineering. This has resulted in significant improvement to the ecological environment in key regions as also in biodiversity. Numerous rare animals and plants as well as endangered species have been brought under protection. China has taken a series of measures to protect and improve the living environment in the process of resource exploitation.