Although ancient China had the concept of encouraging people to plant trees, it was a modern practice for the country to stipulate tree-planting festivals through legal means. On July 31, 1915, the Chinese government established the Qingming Festival in the lunar calendar as Tree Planting Day each year, during which all over the country held tree planting ceremonies and organized afforestation activities. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress at its sixth session decided in February 1979 that March 12th should be Tree Planting Day every year. In September 1984, the seventh session of the sixth session of the National People's Congress Standing Committee passed the revised "Forest Law of the People's Republic of China", which stipulated in the general provisions: "Planting trees and protecting forests is an obligation of citizens," thereby incorporating afforestation into the national legal framework.

China's Tree Planting Day is set on March 12th on the Gregorian calendar. March 12th is the anniversary of the death of Mr. Sun Yat-sen. Mr. Sun Yat-sen attached great importance to forest construction during his lifetime. Not long after the establishment of the Nanjing government of the Republic of China, where he served as provisional president, the government set up the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry in May 1912, with the Forest Administration Bureau under it, responsible for forestry administrative affairs nationwide. In November 1914, China issued its first-ever "Forest Law" in modern history. In July 1915, the government again stipulated that the "Qingming" festival should be designated as Tree Planting Day each year. In February 1979, the sixth session of the Standing Committee of the Fifth National People's Congress passed a resolution according to the proposal of the State Council, designating March 12th as China's Tree Planting Day. The significance of this resolution was to mobilize the people of all ethnic groups across the country to actively plant trees and accelerate the pace of greening the motherland and various forestry construction efforts. Designating the day when Mr. Sun Yat-sen passed away as China's Tree Planting Day also aims to commemorate Mr. Sun Yat-sen's outstanding achievements and symbolizes that the unfulfilled wishes of Mr. Sun Yat-sen during his lifetime will be realized and even better achieved in the new China.

In the summer of 1981, Sichuan, Shaanxi, and other areas suffered from rare floods. In response to the initiative of Comrade Deng Xiaoping, the fourth session of the Fifth National People's Congress in December 1981 approved the "Resolution on Carrying Out the Mass Tree-Planting Movement." On March 12, 1990, the Post and Telecommunications Department issued a set of four stamps titled "Greens the Motherland," with the first one being "Mass Tree-Planting." The resolution pointed out that wherever conditions permit, citizens of the People's Republic of China who are 11 years old or older, except those who are elderly, weak, sick, or disabled, should plant 3 to 5 trees per year or complete corresponding labor tasks such as seedling cultivation, maintenance, and other greening tasks based on local conditions. The resolution called on the people of all ethnic groups across the country to "take action, plant trees every year, and persistently do so like Yu Gong." During the Tree Planting Day in 1982, Comrade Deng Xiaoping took the lead by planting the first tree of the mass tree-planting movement on Yushan Mountain in Beijing.

Since then, the tree-planting obligation has been implemented as a legal duty that citizens must fulfill. A tree-planting campaign of the largest scale, involving the most people, and achieving remarkable results has been continuously carried out nationwide for 26 years. Over the past 26 years of the national tree-planting campaign, the Party and state leaders, regardless of how busy their work was, whether in Beijing or elsewhere, have conscientiously fulfilled the obligation of tree planting as citizens. Statistics show that since the launch of the national tree-planting campaign in 1982, more than 10.4 billion people have participated, and over 49.2 billion trees have been planted.