Three years on: Remarkable achievements of the Yangtze River Economic Belt

The preliminary work of 12 intermodal projects combining ports, railways, and waterways are going well, of which four have been put into operation. A giant container ship from Wuhan to Yangshan Deep Water Port in Shanghai finished its maiden voyage in November 2018, as did the bulk cargo ship of capacities up to 20,000 tons from the Ningbo-Zhoushan Port, Zhejiang province to Ma'anshan Port in Anhui.

The government took overall consideration of the construction of railways, highways, and airports. The Shanghai-Kunming High-speed Railway (HSR) and Nanning-Kunming Railway have opened to traffic, as well as the Wuhan-Jiujiang and Xi’an-Chengdu HSR, as well as the Lanzhou-Chongqing Railway. When the construction of HSR projects along the Yangtze River is completed, the running time from Shanghai to Chengdu and Chongqing will be reduced from more than 10 hours to 6.8 and 5.3 hours respectively. Currently, four national highways, namely Shanghai-Chengdu, Shanghai-Chongqing, Shanghai-Kunming, and Hangzhou-Ruili, together with four airports, lying in Shiyan in Hubei, Shangrao in Jiangxi, Cangyuan and Lancang in Yunnan have been completed. 

Innovation-driven high-quality development of economy.

Changsha Economic Development Zone boasts a pleasant ecological environment. [Photo/cetz.gov.cn]

Seventy national high-tech zones fostered the innovation and transformation of the cities along the belt. Output of strategic emerging industries along the Yangtze River Economic Belt accounted for more than 53.9 percent of the country's gross output of industries above a designated scale in 2017.

The number of new-type urbanization pilot areas totaled 248 across the country, of which 81 were situated in the economic belt, marking a huge step forward in the new urbanization. The national center cities, Chongqing, Chengdu and Wuhan, have been expediting construction. In addition, the cities along the belt have been paying more attention to further opening-up. The China Railway Express, also known as the China-Europe freight train, departed from the region as much as 3,562 times, making up 63 percent of the country's total running number of its kind in the first 11 months of 2018. Eleven provinces and cities along the river generated 1.5 trillion yuan ($223.2 billion) in the total volume of foreign trade in the first three quarters of 2018, accounting for 44 percent of the country's total.

Additionally, the country is expected to continuously improve the system and mechanism, aiming to protect the fragile ecosystem of the Yangtze River. The central government will establish a specialized administration for monitoring the ecological environment of the Yangtze River. A negative-list management system will be set up to strengthen supervision and control of industries with heavy polluting, and the ecological compensation system will be adopted soon. The National People's Congress is making a practical investigation, and efforts to introduce legislation to protect the Yangtze River will be accelerated.