East China's Fujian Province will open all government-funded parks to visitors free of charge in five years, a local construction official has said.

The move is aimed at enabling local people to fully enjoy beautiful scenes of local parks, a result of the local government's afforestation efforts, said Hong Jiexu, deputy head of the Fujian Provincial Construction Bureau, at a provincial meeting on the construction of urban parks on Monday.

Currently, Fujian has 288 urban parks, covering 4,700 hectares and attracting over 84.5 million visitors annually. The number of parks, acreage of parks and visitors rose by 44 percent, 120 percent and 105 percent over the respective figures for the year 2000.

Hong said that currently Fujian has opened more than 250 urban parks to visitors free of charge.

The Yushan scenic zone is the first park in the province which opened to visitors free of charge, in 1999.

(Xinhua News Agency December 28, 2005)