For years, China has been moving mountains for its people - literally.

The country has been bulldozing hundreds of mountains to make way for new cities but scientists are not happy, saying the consequences of the policy ‘‘have not been thought through’’.

Chinese earth-movers shave off mountaintops in Lanzhou, Gansu province, to make way for cities.

In the past decade, mountains stretching over hundreds of kilometres have been demolished and the soil shovelled into valleys to create flat land, in a practise that has become commonplace in China.

The city of Lanzhou, in Gansu province, is in the process of bulldozing more than 700 mountains in what’s been dubbed the largest ‘‘mountain-moving project’’ in Chinese history.