Ministry outlines water resources achievements

China’s strengthening of water resources management facilities in the past decade has significantly beefed up the country’s flood control capability and enhanced its food and water supply security, said Liu Weiping, vice-minister of water resources.

“Ensuring the safety of people’s lives and property has always been the top priority of the ministry,” he said at a news conference organized by the State Council Information Office on Thursday.

To better protect people’s lives and property, the ministry has accelerated the construction of reservoirs, dikes and detention basins to beef up flood control systems, he said, adding that it has increased the capacity of the country’s reservoirs by 163 billion cubic meters.

Liu said the ministry has also taken measures to improve forecasting and early warning efforts and emergency response plans.

Thanks to these efforts, the country successfully controlled a series of severe floods in its major river basins, including the basins of the Yangtze, Yellow and Huaihe rivers.

The average proportion of losses caused by floods in the country’s GDP in the past decade fell to 0.24 percent, down from 0.51 percent in the previous decade, he said.

Liu said the ministry’s efforts to promote water resources management projects had contributed significantly to food and water supply security.

Since 2014, the ministry has managed to add 10 million hectares of farmland under highly water-efficient irrigation, he said. The irrigation rate of the country’s farmland has now reached 55 percent.

“This has provided strong support to ensure bumper harvests,” he said.

Ninety percent of the country’s rural residents now have access to tap water.

“We have brought about a historic resolution to rural residents’ difficulty in getting drinking water, which has plagued many rural areas for generations,” Liu said.

Zhang Xiangwei, head of the ministry’s department of planning and programming, said the ministry has greatly diversified the channels to raise funds for building water resources management facilities.

The ministry collected over 1.2 trillion yuan ($167 billion) in funding last year for the construction of water resources management projects, 2.5 times as much as in 2014, he said.

Zhang said the contribution of government bonds, credit financing and private capital to investment for water resources management has increased sharply.

Such channels contributed 545 billion yuan in funding last year, 7.4 times the amount in 2014, he said.