BEIJING, Nov. 6 (Xinhua) -- China has built more than 54,000 water conservancy projects in the Yellow River Basin over the past 80 years, as part of efforts to improve water conservancy infrastructure and develop and use water and hydropower resources scientifically, according to a press conference on Friday.
The Yellow River has maintained a continuous flow for 27 consecutive years, and the water quality of its mainstream has remained at Class II standard for nearly four years, the press conference held by the State Council Information Office on 80 years of Yellow River governance revealed.
The compliance rate for ecological flows in key rivers and lakes in the Yellow River Basin has exceeded 90 percent, the press conference noted.
China classifies surface water quality into five grades, with Class I being the best. Ecological flows refer to water flows that support populations, communities and ecosystems, among other functions.
Wang Bao'en, vice minister of water resources, said that over the past eight decades, China has basically established a flood-control engineering system, a monitoring and forecasting system for rainfall, water and sediment conditions, and a working system for flood and drought disaster prevention, helping keep the Yellow River safe year after year.
With only 2 percent of the country's total water resources, the Yellow River supports the water demand of 12 percent of China's population and 17 percent of its arable land, and underpins 14 percent of the national gross domestic product, Wang said.
Large-scale, comprehensive soil erosion control on the Loess Plateau has gradually turned the plateau's dominant land color from yellow to green, improved local production and living conditions, generated economic benefits totaling 2.43 trillion yuan (about 361.78 billion U.S. dollars), and helped lift more than 2.5 million people there out of poverty, Wang added.
Chen Dongming, director of the Yellow River Conservancy Commission, said that in the more than 2,540 years from the pre-Qin Dynasty period to the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the Yellow River experienced 1,593 dike breaches and 26 major course changes.
Over the past 80 years, dikes in the lower reaches have been raised and reinforced four times, and the total length of dikes along the Yellow River's main stream has reached 3,000 km.
More than 10,000 monitoring stations, including hydrological, water-level and rainfall stations, have been built, and a national-level Yellow River flood control and drought relief headquarters has been set up. Together, they form an integrated, modern and systematic disaster prevention and mitigation system that combines responsibility implementation, decision support and dispatch command, Chen noted.
Chen added that over the past 80 years, the river has withstood 12 major floods with peak flows exceeding 10,000 cubic meters per second at the Huayuankou station in the lower reaches, while dikes on both banks remained intact.
These efforts ended the Yellow River's history of frequent breaches and course changes, Chen said.
Yao Wenguang, a disaster prevention official with the Ministry of Water Resources, said the water-sediment regulation program implemented since 2002 marks an important shift in Yellow River governance from passive disaster prevention to proactive shaping, and from traditional to modern approaches.
The Yellow River Protection Law, which took effect on April 1, 2023, provides a strong legal guarantee for protecting and governing the river, Yao added.
The Yellow River, China's second-largest river after the Yangtze, is dubbed the "mother river." ■
