China has reduced its land area stricken by water and soil erosion continuously in the past three decades, said a senior water resources official.

Monitoring done by satellite remote sensing and field investigation shows that about 2.7 million square kilometers of land in Chinese mainland were troubled by erosion in 2018, or 28.6 percent of the total, Pu Chaoyong, director-general of water and soil conservation at the Ministry of Water Resources, told a news conference on Friday.

The size went down by about 7 percent from that in 2011, when the result of last round of monitoring was unveiled, and the area reduced equals to that of the entire Hunan province in Central China, he said.

He also said that China had almost 3.67 million sq km of land with water and soil erosion in 1985. The number declined to 3.55 million sq km in 1999 and to 2.94 million sq km in 2011.

He noted, however, that 25 percent of land in Chinese mainland was still plagued by the erosion problem.

“It’s increasingly difficult to address the erosion problem that is scattered across the country. The pressure for water and soil preservation is especially huge in central and western parts of the country because of the high intensity in infrastructure construction and resource development there,” he said.