The top leadership of the Communist Party of China urged on Monday efforts to promote ecological protection and high-quality development in the Yellow River Basin, saying that the relationship between water, population, food and energy must be balanced to accelerate the country's transition to a model of green development.

Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, presided over this year's first meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, which reviewed opinions on comprehensively promoting ecological protection and high-quality development in the Yellow River Basin.

Participants in the meeting said ecological conservation and high-quality development in the basin have millennial significance for the great rejuvenation and sustainable development of the Chinese nation.

The Yellow River is China's second-largest river after the Yangtze. Honored as China's "Mother River", it originates in Northwest China's Qinghai province and runs through nine provincial-level regions, including Shaanxi and Henan provinces, before emptying into the Bohai Sea in East China's Shandong province.

The 5,464-kilometer waterway feeds about 12 percent of China's population, irrigates about 15 percent of its arable land and supplies water to more than 60 cities.

The meeting's participants said that the Yellow River Protection Law, which took effect on April 1, 2023, must be fully implemented.

As the ecological systems of the river are vastly different between its upper, middle and lower reaches, they stressed the need to make continuous efforts to improve its ecological protection in a coordinated way.

The regions in the upper reaches of the river should focus on enhancing their water conservation capacity, those in the middle reaches should focus on controlling water and soil erosion and those in the lower reaches should make wetland protection and improving ecological environment their priorities, they said.

It was noted at the meeting that further efforts should be made to tap into the potential for conserving water resources and guarantee the safety of important embankments, reservoirs and infrastructure to ensure the long-term stability of the Yellow River.

When the Yellow River Basin pursues high-quality development, it is important to better align it with the country's strategies for the large-scale development of the western region and the accelerated rise of the central region, said the meeting's participants.

They also called for efforts to protect and promote the Yellow River culture, preserve cultural heritage, and promote the integrated development of culture and tourism in the Yellow River Basin, which is a crucial birthplace of the Chinese nation and Chinese civilization.

Chinese people have struggled against the flooding of the Yellow River since ancient times, and conservation of the river has always been high on the country's agenda.

Dong Zhanfeng, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy for Environmental Planning, said that since the founding of the People's Republic of China, the Party and government have attached great importance to the protection and management of the Yellow River Basin.

"With the Yellow River key to sustaining China's food, energy and ecological security, President Xi has repeatedly reiterated its importance to the sustainable development of China," Dong said.

Since the 18th CPC National Congress in 2012, Xi has visited all of the nine provinces and autonomous regions along the Yellow River.

In 2019, 2021 and 2024, he chaired three symposiums respectively on the ecological protection and high-quality development of the Yellow River Basin in Henan province, in the middle reaches, Shandong province, in the lower reaches, and Gansu province, in the upper reaches.

"The latest meeting, once again, demonstrates the Party leadership's strong will to make the health of the Yellow River a priority," Dong said.

Work reports discussed

Monday's meeting also reviewed a report from the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee after it heard and discussed the work reports of the leading Party members groups of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, the State Council, the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, the Supreme People's Court and the Supreme People's Procuratorate, as well as the work report of the Secretariat of the CPC Central Committee.

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