Shanxi regulation to protect Yellow River

Tourists visit the Hukou Waterfall on the Yellow River in Jixian county, Shanxi province, on Friday. LYU GUIMING/FOR CHINA DAILY

Shanxi province is striving to tackle the major ecological and environmental issues in the Yellow River Basin within its jurisdiction through regulation, giving strong support to high-level protection and high-quality development in the region, a senior provincial people's congress official said on Friday.

Duan Baoyan, deputy director of the financial and economic committee of the Shanxi Provincial People's Congress, was addressing a news conference about a new regulation on the ecological protection and high-quality development of the basin.

The regulation will come into effect on Oct 1.

The middle reaches of the 5,464-kilometer Yellow River, the second-longest in China, extend for 965 km in Shanxi. Known as the cradle of Chinese civilization, the river originates in Northwest China's Qinghai province and runs eastward through nine provinces and autonomous regions before emptying into the Bohai Sea in Shandong province.

"The economic and social development of the Yellow River Basin in Shanxi still faces many challenges, including unbalanced and inadequate development, reliance on a resource-based economy, a fragile ecological environment, a shortage and overexploitation of water resources, insufficient exploration of the connotations of Yellow River culture, and an urgent need to improve the cultural industry system," Duan said.

She said the new regulation emphasizes the importance of protecting and restoring the basin's ecology and requires local governments at or above the county level to establish and improve long-term mechanisms for its ecological protection.

The regulation also stipulates that governments at or above the county level should strengthen the ecological protection of Yellow River tributaries, promote natural ecological restoration, and ensure that the water quality of rivers reaches Grade III or above, she added.

Sun Junrong, deputy director of the provincial people's congress Standing Committee's legislative affairs committee, said that to reduce water loss and soil erosion, the regulation mandates governments at or above the county level to carry out comprehensive management of small watersheds, and construct reservoirs, underground cisterns and small-scale water-saving irrigation facilities.

The regulation also requires the provincial government to integrate key afforestation projects throughout the province to build a forest system, and gradually increase the forest coverage rate in the Yellow River Basin, she said.

Wu Dongsheng, from the Shanxi Provincial Development and Reform Commission, said it will promote the implementation of the regulation, and include the ecological protection and high-quality development of the Yellow River Basin in the province's 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30).

Liu Hailong, an official with the legislative affairs committee, said Shanxi is the third province to introduce a regulation to protect the Yellow River, following Gansu and Shandong.