Stronger protection, coordination aim to make Yellow River more beautiful

President Xi Jinping has called for sustained efforts to strengthen coordinated protection and governance of the Yellow River, making the nation's mother river more beautiful and ensuring that it benefits the Chinese nation for generations to come.

In a recent instruction, Xi, who is also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, said that 80 years of Party-led efforts to harness the river had fundamentally changed its history of frequent levee breaches and created a miracle of flood safety year-after-year.

These achievements fully demonstrate the significant strengths of the socialist system, he said.

He called for adherence to a water management approach that prioritizes water conservation, balances spatial distribution, undertakes systematic approaches and gives full play to the roles of both the government and the market.

Efforts should be made to further improve the framework of holistic protection and collaboration, advance ecological conservation and high-quality development in the Yellow River basin, and strengthen the national ecological security barrier, Xi said.

He also emphasized ensuring the river's long-term stability and carrying forward the Yellow River culture.

Xi's instruction was conveyed on Monday at a work conference on comprehensively advancing the protection and governance of the Yellow River in Zhengzhou, Henan province, which Vice-Premier Liu Guozhong attended and addressed.

The 5,464-kilometer Yellow River flows through nine provinces and autonomous regions before meeting the Bohai Sea. Its basin supports about 12 percent of China's population and accounts for about 14 percent of the country's GDP.

Since the 18th CPC National Congress in 2012, Xi has inspected all nine provinces and autonomous regions along the Yellow River and chaired three symposiums on the ecological conservation and high-quality development of the basin.