 However, the forest area per capita is still far lower than the international average.According to Carbon Brief, China planted the largest amount of new forest out of any country between 1990 and 2015, facilitated by the country's Grain for Green programme started in 1999, by investing more than $100bn in afforestation programmes and planting more than 35bn trees across 12 provinces.By 2015, the amount of planted forest in China covered 79m hectares.