Accounting for two percent of China’s river runoff, the Yellow River, known as China’s “mother river,” runs through nine provinces and autonomous regions, feeds about 12 percent of China’s population, irrigates about 15 percent of arable land, and supplies water to more than 50 cities.
Among the major river basins in China, the Yellow River basin has the largest proportion of water and soil loss area to the basin land area. The ecology of the upper, middle and lower reaches of the river is prone to degradation, with extremely difficult and slow restoration ability and pollution emissions.
Chinese President Xi Jinping held a symposium in 2019 and 2021, urging concerted efforts to promote ecological protection and high-quality development of the Yellow River, adding that differences between the upper, middle and lower reaches of the river should be fully considered, given that the Yellow River ecosystem is an organic whole.
Echoing President Xi’s words, China has planned and implemented a series of practical measures to protect the river. To date, the water quality along the main stream of the river continues to improve, with the biodiversity at the source of the Yellow River and the Yellow River Delta showing continuous improvement.
Convening a meeting on the ecological conservation and high-quality development of the basin on Thursday in Lanzhou, the capital of northwest China’s Gansu Province, Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, called for promoting ecological protection across the entire river basin to a new level, achieving new progress in green transformation and bringing new improvements to the lives of the people.
Ecological protection reaching a higher level
Since the 18th CPC National Congress, Xi has always paid attention to the conservation of the Yellow River. He has inspected nine provinces and autonomous regions along the river, promoting continuous new progress in ecological conservation and high-quality development of the basin.
The Yellow River Protection Law came into effect in April 2023. As China’s second piece of legislation on a specific river basin after the Yangtze River Protection Law, the new law seeks to resolve key problems of the Yellow River basin, including water shortages, ecological fragility and flooding.
Over the past year, there has been a marked improvement in the Yellow River basin’s ecological environment, and the ecological outlook for the rivers, lakes and reservoirs continues to improve.
Through implementing ecological water replenishment, a total of 1.448 billion cubic meters of water has been replenished in key areas, ensuring that the main stream of the Yellow River continued to flow for 24 consecutive years.
Focusing on the comprehensive management of water and soil loss, the country has achieved a “double reduction” in the area and intensity of water and soil loss in the basin.
The country also saw advancement in water and soil loss control in the Loess Plateau. Today, 61 percent of the water and soil loss area in the Three-North Shelterbelt Forest Program has been effectively controlled, and the annual sediment flow into the Yellow River has been reduced by about 400 million tonnes.
“It is necessary to continuously improve the holistic framework of ecological protection and collaboration in the Yellow River basin to strengthen the national ecological security shields,” Xi said during Thursday’s meeting, urging continuous efforts to intensify the battle against pollution and highlighting the management of important tributaries and key lakes and reservoirs.
High-quality development of the basin
Following Xi’s consistent attention to the matter, in October 2021, the central authorities issued a comprehensive guideline on the ecological protection and high-quality development of the Yellow River basin through 2030 and beyond.
The nine provinces and autonomous regions the Yellow River runs through also took concrete action to advance the ecological protection and high-quality development of the basin.
Located in the upper reaches of the Yellow River, Gansu Province is an important water conservation and replenishment area for the entire Yellow River basin. In recent years, the province has taken multiple measures to continue to maintain the health of the river, taking the lead in formulating and promulgating provincial-level regulations regarding the basin’s ecological protection and high-quality development.
Gansu has also established 103 ambient air quality automatic monitoring stations, 87 water environment monitoring sections, 26 water quality automatic monitoring stations, 1,402 soil environment quality monitoring points and 2,052 acoustic environment quality monitoring points, realizing dynamic supervision of the ecology of the Yellow River basin.
Meanwhile, the province has made significant strides in promoting green development in the Yellow River basin. In the first quarter of this year, the province transmitted 12.531 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity, a year-on-year increase of 21.27 percent.
A total of 5.158 billion kWh of electricity was delivered from new energy sources, an increase of 20.15 percent year on year, contributing to clean and low-carbon energy transformation across the country.
It is necessary to promote a comprehensive green transformation of the development model and build a modern industrial system with distinctive advantages, Xi said, calling for efforts to develop a green and low-carbon economy, orderly promote the planning and construction of large-scale wind power and photovoltaic bases and power transmission channels, and speed up the substitution of clean energy for fossil fuels in key industries.
