China to 'build' world's largest national park (?)

China is creating a new national park in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of the country's northwest, according to an article in China Daily. The article says it will become the world's largest national park, replacing Yellowstone. Errr, wrong. Yellowstone isn't even in the top 10 largest American parks (Wrangell - St. Elias is the largest), and the largest in the world is in Greenland. Poor job by the quality control department.

The park is to be an extension of Kanas Geological Park, and the extended border will incorporate 10 times the land of the original park (to 10,000 km2). Let's hope that this park won't fall victim to some of the problems with existing geological parks in China...the problems of poor public education, inadequate protection, and overdevelopment to lure in the mighty tourist Yuan. For more info on some of these problems take a look at this article from Focus on Geography. China has been putting a lot of effort recently into naming parks and having grand openings, but many (not all) of these parks don't amount to much other than tourist sites with a peripheral interest in preservation and eduation.