I'm curious how much of it is fake; at-least some of it is. To get financial incentives from the central government, local governments have pained rocks green and planted plastic trees to make it look like they planted trees in satellite photos.

Interesting... where can I read more about this?

https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1159907.shtml

Trees pop up on Chinese social media all the time, the rocks were a particularly egregious case.