Zhang Liangcai used to be a fisherman on Taihu Lake,Yangtze in the 1990s, but now he works as a lake cleaner since the city government of Wuxi, Jiangsu province, started to restore the lake’s ecology in 2002.
The environmental campaign accelerated in response to a water crisis in Wuxi caused by pollution in 2007, and a “river chiefs” system was established in which government officials are assigned to protect waterways in their area.
“Now the water is much cleaner, and more birds rest here during the winter migration in recent years,” said Zhang, 53.
The system has been spreading across China since 2016, and cross-provincial working procedures were established in November to coordinate joint anti-pollution inspections and water quality monitoring in the cities around Taihu Lake, the country’s third-largest freshwater body, located in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River.
“Taihu Lake straddles Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, so procedures for cross-provincial communications and cooperation are needed,” Wu Wenqing, the director of the Ministry of Water Resources’ Taihu Basin Authority, said during the first plenary meeting of the two provinces’ river chiefs on Nov 13.
This is just one example of the coordination efforts that have been taking place across ministries and provinces along the Yangtze River for balanced and sustainable development since the outline of the development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt was issued in 2016.
The economic belt, covering 11 provinces and municipalities and accounting for over 40 percent of China’s population and GDP, has long been hailed as a major national economic engine.
Wu Xiaohua, deputy head of the Academy of Macroeconomic Research under the National Development and Reform Commission, said the economic belt is vital to China’s economy as it has the largest workforce, the biggest industry scale, the strongest regional economy, the largest constellation of complementary industries and its development can greatly boost the neighboring area.