China Post is to issue a set of five commemorative stamps entitled The National Parks on November 5, 2022. The designs are respectively the Three-River-Source National Park, the Giant Panda National Park, the Northeast China Tiger and Leopard National Park, the Hainan Tropical Forests National Park, and the Wuyishan National Park. The denomination of the whole set is 6 yuan and the planned circulation is 7.6 million sets.

By implementing the national park system, China aims to maintain the primitiveness and integrity of natural ecology, protect biodiversity and ecological security, and preserve precious natural assets for future generations. It is an important measure taken by China to promote ecological protection, build a beautiful country and pursue harmony between humans and nature. At Leaders’ Summit of the 15th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity held on October 12, 2021, President Xi Jinping declared that China officially designated its first group of national parks, including the Three-River-Source National Park, the Giant Panda National Park, the Northeast China Tiger and Leopard National Park, the Hainan Tropical Forests National Park, and the Wuyishan National Park. With a protected land area of 230,000 square kilometers in 10 provinces, the five national parks are home to nearly 30 percent of the key terrestrial wildlife species found in China.

This set of stamps is designed on the basis of photographic works and presented in a graphic design manner. On the left side of each design is the representative landscape of the corresponding national park; encircled by a ring of perforations are some representative animals presented with carved lines and images; on the right some representative plants. The designs as a whole highlight the gorgeous natural landscape and rich ecological resources of the five national parks.

This set of stamps is co-designed by Ma Lihang, Liu Bo and Yin Xiaofei, printed with photogravure technology by Beijing Stamp Printing House Company Limited. On each stamp, the circular part encircled by perforations is printed with colorless orange fluorescent ink, which makes the picture of wild animals more vivid under ultraviolet light thanks to its telescope effect.

These stamps will be available for 6 months at designated postal outlets nationwide, online mall of China Philately (https://jiyou.11185.cn), the mobile app of China Post, the WeChat Mall for philatelic products in the official WeChat account and the WeChat mini program of China Post Group. To present more information about the stamps, China Post will release their digital contents through the WeChat mini program “Encyclopedia of China Philately and Stamps”, where philatelists can learn more about the stamps via its AR function.