Financial aid from enterprises is needed to help plant trees in areas surrounding Beijing that have become desert, officials said yesterday. Substantial achievements have been made in recent years in making the city's rural areas green again, said Shan Zhaoxiang, director of the Beijing Afforestation Foundation, at a signing ceremony yesterday for the 5 million yuan (US$602,409) donation given by the China International Trust and Investment Corp (CITIC) to an tree-planting project in Xuanhua, Hebei Province near Beijing.