The 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021–2025) — China’s national development blueprint for economic and social progress—marked a critical phase for integrating citizen science into the country’s ecological monitoring system. Professional monitoring alone cannot achieve high-frequency coverage across the nation’s vast ecosystems, creating gaps that citizen science can potentially fill. This Perspective synthesizes lessons from China’s experience, operationalizing “complementarity” across spatial, temporal, and thematic dimensions, and proposing a three-level integration pathway (data, management, practice). Drawing on documented projects in biodiversity, environmental quality, and climate monitoring, we analyze persistent challenges—distinguishing observation errors, sampling biases, and protocol heterogeneity—and introduce a tiered participation model (contributory, collaborative, co-created) aligned with project objectives. We conclude with actionable strategies for policy frameworks, data quality management, and FAIR-compliant infrastructure. China’s experience offers valuable insights for countries, particularly in the Global South, beginning to harness citizen science for environmental governance.
Gao et al. (2026) studied this question.