China has managed to advance environmental protection and economic development in parallel in the Yangtze River Basin, but more efforts are needed to address some prominent environmental problems, according to a senior national legislator.
“The Yangtze River Basin has experienced continuous improvement in its water quality at the same time as increasing high-quality economic development,” Wang Chen, vice-chairman of the National People’s Congress Standing Committee, said on Dec 28.
In 2021, 97.1 percent of the national monitoring sections in the basin registered “fairly good” water quality, he said while reporting to the committee the results of an NPC inspection on the implementation of the Yangtze River Protection Law.
Adopted in late 2020, the law went into effect on March 1, 2021.
The country has a five-tier water quality system for surface water, with Grade I the best. Water quality is considered “fairly good” if it is at or above Grade III. According to the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, the proportion of national monitoring sections with fairly good water quality in the basin stood at 85 percent at the end of 2020.
The basin contributed 46.6 percent of the country’s GDP in 2021, he said. The rate is 4.3 percentage points higher than that in 2015, according to the National Development and Reform Commission.
The achievements were the result of a series of measures taken by various government bodies and local governments to implement the Yangtze River Protection Law, the vice-chairman said.