Is this innocent env. reporting, or Chinese propaganda?

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Is this an objective report on a reformation project in China, or was this placed by the CCP to encourage positive thoughts about the PRC?

66 billion trees have been planted in China's Great Green Wall — and they appear to be growing faster than natural forests

Maybe it's propaganda mixed with enough truth to confuse people?

My general rule is to not pay attention to much of anything that comes from Chinese State Media, even if it is true. Because the CCP is just as good at weaponizing the truth as they are at weaponizing lies.

And frankly I find the recent rise in Westerners conforming to being apologists and defenders of the CCP really concerning.

It's bad enough that we're also dealing with Donald Trump wrecking the US...

Neither propaganda nor harmless reporting. Just a journalist phoning it in.

The “66 billion” number first appeared in The Economist in 2014 — no source, no citation, just stated as fact. WIRED copied it, Live Science copied it, everyone copied it. China’s government has never measured the Three-North program in “trees planted” — they use hectares of forest area. A 2017 peer-reviewed paper (Royal Society) estimated ~50 billion, not 66.

As for the AGU paper, it’s a perfectly normal remote sensing study. Young planted forests grow faster than old natural ones — that’s not surprising, and the authors never claimed it means better long-term carbon storage. The paper has nothing to do with where the “66 billion” number came from.

The problem with this reporting isn’t bias. It’s laziness.