Yangtze River belt thriving under reforms
China has made strong progress in promoting high-quality, green development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt as it ramps up efforts to conserve Asia’s longest watercourse.
In the first three quarters of last year, monitoring found that 90.6 percent of water in the belt — which covers nine provinces and two municipalities — was suitable for drinking, the National Development and Reform Commission said in a statement released on Tuesday.
The proportion of high-quality water was 8.8 percentage points higher than the national average. It also represented a 1.8 percentage point year-on-year improvement in the belt area, the country’s top economic planner said.
The quality of economic development in the belt has also been rising, the commission said.
During the three quarters, the belt saw its contribution to the country’s GDP climb 10.6 percent to 38.26 trillion yuan ($6 trillion), it said. The belt accounted for 46.7 percent of total GDP, up 0.1 percentage point year-on-year.
The figures show win-win achievements in environmental protection and socioeconomic development, the commission added, following the country’s sustained endeavors to boost the growth of the belt as a national strategy put forward by China’s central leadership.
Green development of the economic belt has been a key concern of President Xi Jinping. While presiding over a meeting on the economic belt in Chongqing on Jan 5, 2016, he said it is one of the country’s key strategies to boost growth in the belt.
The status and role of the river and the economic belt mean development must prioritize ecology and green development to respect natural, economic and social rules, Xi stressed.
He said the Yangtze River boasts a unique ecological system. To restore its ecological environment will be an extremely important task, and no large-scale development will be allowed along the river at present and for a long period to come.
Xi also chaired another two symposiums on the economic belt, in Wuhan, Hubei province, in April 2018 and in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, in November 2020.