In 2023, major water conservancy projects were in full swing. After the main flood season, construction started on the Wenchaojian River flood control project in Beijing's sub-center. As a backbone flood control project in the North Canal basin, once completed it will be operated in conjunction with the basin's flood storage and detention areas to safeguard flood control in the relevant regions. In early December, the Pearl River Delta water resources allocation project successfully completed the first-phase water transmission milestone from the Liyuzhou pumping station to the Gaoxinsha reservoir, taking a key step toward achieving full-line water transmission. At the start of the new year in 2024, tens of thousands of water conservancy construction sites scattered like stars across the motherland remain bustling and vibrant. On January 2, the arch ring of the Xiangshuidong aqueduct of the Zhanghe irrigation district renewal and modernization project in Hubei—a major agricultural water-saving and water-supply project of the national 14th Five-Year Plan—was successfully rotated into place and closed.

It is precisely through such round-the-clock, unremitting efforts that water conservancy builders delivered a highly valuable report card in the year just past, 2023: 27,900 new projects broke ground nationwide, and investment completed in water conservancy construction reached 1,199.6 billion yuan, up 10.1% from 2022, when it first crossed the one-trillion-yuan threshold. Employment absorbed by water conservancy construction continued to increase, with more workers contributing to national security while earning more labor remuneration.

Behind the record-breaking figures lies the strong momentum unleashed by high-quality water conservancy development in the new stage, under the scientific guidance of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era and the comprehensive blueprint drawn up at the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China for building a modern infrastructure system.

Behind the record-breaking figures, water conservancy departments, bearing in mind the "top priorities of the nation," have earnestly implemented the decisions and requirements of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council, been courageous in innovation and responsibility and adept at achieving results, and adopted strong measures to advance major water conservancy projects, consolidating the cornerstone of support for Chinese-style modernization.

Behind the record-breaking figures are the increasingly complete map of the national water network, the steady improvement of the country's water security capacity, and the growing sense of fulfillment, happiness and security among the people.

Steering the Course and Charting the Plan

The Guangdong water resources allocation project around the Beibu Gulf—which starts from the rolling Xijiang River, crosses the Yunkai Mountains and winds through the coastal plains—is under full construction. In April 2023, during an inspection tour in Guangdong, General Secretary Xi Jinping made a special trip to the Dashuiqiao reservoir in Xuwen County, the junction station for southward water transmission of the project, to learn about project construction, management, operation and follow-up planning. General Secretary Xi pointed out that China is short of water and its water resources are very unevenly distributed. In advancing Chinese-style modernization, water resources must be taken into account, with cities, land, people and production determined by water availability, and water-saving industries developed.

Accelerating the building of the national water network, constructing a modern, high-quality water infrastructure network, and comprehensively addressing water resource, water ecological, water environment and water disaster issues is a major strategic deployment made by the CPC Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core. General Secretary Xi has studied major national water network projects on many occasions, stressing that once built, the water network will be another century-defining chapter in the Chinese nation's history of water governance and will go down in history.

In May 2023, the CPC Central Committee and the State Council issued the Outline of the Plan for Building the National Water Network (hereinafter referred to as the Outline), a major event of milestone significance in the history of China's water development. The issuance of the Outline sounded the clarion call for building the national water network in all respects, further accelerating water infrastructure construction.

Over the past year, General Secretary Xi's warm care and personal blueprint have pointed the way forward for accelerating water conservancy construction, building the national water network and enhancing water security capacity. Facing new situations, new tasks and new requirements, the Ministry of Water Resources has thoroughly implemented the spirit of the 20th National Congress of the CPC, practiced General Secretary Xi's water governance approach of "prioritizing water conservation, balancing spatial distribution, taking systematic approaches, and giving full play to the roles of both government and market" and his important expositions on water governance, earnestly implemented the decisions and requirements of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council on flood control, disaster relief and post-disaster recovery and reconstruction, and, centering on the construction tasks of the Outline, joined hands with relevant departments and localities to go all out to accelerate water infrastructure construction, contributing water conservancy strength to stabilizing growth, promoting employment and driving economic recovery and improvement.

Planning Ahead and Overcoming Difficulties

The Ministry of Water Resources has thoroughly implemented the decisions and deployments of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council to comprehensively advance water infrastructure construction. "We must focus on networking, patching the network and strengthening the chain, accelerate the building of a national water network that is 'systematically complete and safe and reliable, intensive and efficient, green and intelligent, and smoothly circulating and orderly regulated,' and strive to enhance the benefits of the water infrastructure network," stressed Minister of Water Resources Li Guoying at the 2023 National Water Conservancy Work Conference.

The Ministry of Water Resources has held numerous party group meetings, ministerial meetings and special ministerial office meetings to study water infrastructure construction and resolve prominent problems. "In 2023, the Ministry of Water Resources carried out 22 scheduling consultations on water infrastructure construction to study difficult and bottleneck issues in project advancement, laying the foundation for ensuring the completion of annual targets and tasks," said Zhang Xiangwei, director of the Department of Planning and Programming of the Ministry of Water Resources.

Advance planning and refined management have created conditions for major water conservancy projects to "start early and start more." The Ministry of Water Resources formulated in advance the 2023 list of major water conservancy projects to be advanced, established ledgers, refined work plans item by item, assigned responsibilities to specific posts and persons, controlled nodes down to specific matters and days, assigned dedicated personnel to follow up, set up special task forces to advance, tracked progress weekly, and pushed for construction to start as early as possible on the premise of ensuring project quality and production safety.

In accordance with relevant requirements, a major water conservancy project often requires processing nearly a dozen or more essential documents. Through close communication and coordination, all 17 essential documents for the Yellow River Guxian Water Conservancy Hub were completed by the end of 2023, with feasibility study approval in sight, laying the foundation for construction to start. To advance more projects and start them earlier, water conservancy departments at all levels have taken the initiative to coordinate and consult with relevant departments, resolving difficult and bottleneck issues such as land use, environmental impact assessment and project approval link by link.

Local water conservancy departments have likewise made active efforts to help water conservancy construction achieve "accelerated speed." A relevant official of the Shandong Provincial Department of Water Resources introduced that, to accelerate the construction of the water network pilot zone, Shandong has established a three-level (provincial, municipal and county) work coordination and advancement mechanism, with the provincial party secretary and governor personally serving as the two heads of the provincial water network pilot zone construction work mechanism; party committees and governments at all levels have placed water network construction on important agendas, and relevant departments have advanced in coordination, pooling strong synergy and laying a solid foundation for the comprehensive launch of pilot zone construction.

In interviews, many respondents admitted that even when suffering from severe colds or when seriously ill elderly family members at home had no one to care for them, they still stayed at their posts, believing that seeing water conservancy projects start construction one day earlier and yield benefits one day earlier made all the sacrifice worthwhile. These plain words reveal the sincerity of water conservancy workers who bear in mind the "top priorities of the nation," strive to be first and seek the well-being of the people.

Giving Full Play to Both Roles and Broadening Financing

Water conservancy projects are strongly public-interest in nature; major ones in particular often feature large investment scale, long construction cycles and weak profitability, and frequently encounter investment and financing "bottlenecks." With tens of thousands of water conservancy projects breaking ground, where does the funding come from?

"On the one hand, water conservancy departments at all levels have actively sought increased public financial input for water conservancy construction. On the other hand, we have deepened water conservancy investment and financing reform, actively sought financial credit and social capital investment in water conservancy construction, and raised construction funds through multiple channels," Zhang Xiangwei introduced.

In November 2023, the preliminary design report of the Yanshan Ganhe river channel improvement project in Haishu District, Ningbo City, Zhejiang Province, was successfully approved by the local development and reform department, formally entering the comprehensive construction stage. The project is a key barrier safeguarding flood control in downtown Ningbo, with an estimated total investment of 5.42 billion yuan.

Securing funding is key to getting projects started early. According to reports, the project's financing adopted a "loose plus tight" syndicated loan model composed of one policy bank and six commercial banks. As of October 2023, the project had successfully obtained 5 billion yuan in syndicated loans, including 2.6 billion yuan from the Agricultural Development Bank and 2.4 billion yuan from six commercial banks led by China Construction Bank.

When discussing how to win the full support of numerous banks, Xie Feihong, director of the Haishu District Water Resources Bureau, summed it up: "The most fundamental thing is that a broad consensus of 'water conservancy for the people' has been formed; we 'stepped out' of water conservancy to 'plan' water conservancy, and leveraged the resource-agglomeration effect of the Yanshan Ganhe as a major waterway artery to strengthen the project's financing advantages."

The innovative financing "playbook" of the Yanshan Ganhe river channel improvement project in Haishu District is a microcosm of Zhejiang's "giving full play to both roles" to expand effective investment in water conservancy. In Guangdong, Shunde District of Foshan City used a "financial instrument plus special bond" model to resolve 720 million yuan in project capital for the Qunliwei and Shilongwei improvement projects; in Sichuan, Zhongjiang County of Deyang City transferred the 30-year franchise right of Jiguang Reservoir to a county-level development group for 600 million yuan in financing for water facility construction... Localities have actively built government-bank-enterprise matching platforms, further broadening financing channels for water conservancy construction.

Giving full play to both the government and the market is an important guarantee for water conservancy construction investment to hit new highs. Data show that in 2023, 1,223.8 billion yuan of water conservancy construction investment was secured throughout the year, of which 545.1 billion yuan came from local government special bonds, financial credit and social capital, accounting for 44.5% of the national secured investment scale, 22.5 percentage points higher than the annual average during the 13th Five-Year Plan period.

"In water conservancy construction investment, the relatively rapid growth of local government special bonds, bank credit and social capital shows that the whole of society is optimistic about investment in water conservancy projects that benefit both the present and the long term, believing that these projects have a certain space for returns," said Guo Liyan, deputy director and researcher of the Institute of Economics of the Chinese Academy of Macroeconomic Research.

Driving the Economy and Benefiting People's Livelihood

"After safety training, I can take up my post and earn more than 9,000 yuan a month." In March 2023, Liu Qiang, a construction worker busy at the Huixi Road pipeline construction site of the Phase II supporting project of the Central Yunnan Water Diversion Project undertaken by China Railway First Group, said in a media interview. As the largest single project in Yunnan Province in terms of investment, the Central Yunnan Water Diversion Project can create more than 25,000 direct jobs and indirectly create about 12.4 million jobs in upstream and downstream industries.

Like Liu Qiang, more and more frontline construction workers are joining the ranks of water conservancy construction. Data show that in 2023, water conservancy construction absorbed 2.739 million employed people, up 8.9% from 2022, and paid out 56.8 billion yuan in wages, up 38.2%.

"Accelerating investment and construction in major infrastructure such as water conservancy is conducive in the short term to expanding domestic demand and stabilizing growth, and in the medium and long term to accelerating the transformation of old and new growth drivers and promoting coordinated regional development," Guo Liyan analyzed. In 2023, water conservancy construction funds were focused on projects such as river basin flood control engineering systems, major national water network water diversion and key water source projects, river and lake ecological environment restoration, and digital twin water conservancy, which play an important role in safeguarding flood control, water supply, food and ecological security while making positive contributions to expanding domestic demand and promoting economic recovery and improvement.

The water conservancy project industry chain is long and strongly drives key regions and upstream and downstream industries. "In 2023, we went all out to start construction of the two-reservoir interconnection water diversion project, which will connect the two major 'water vats' of Ningjin Reservoir and Daliu Reservoir and improve water supply capacity," introduced Meng Jihai, director of the Ningjin County Water Resources Bureau in Shandong Province. The project has large demand for large-diameter pipes, cement and steel rebar, and electrical equipment. During implementation and construction, water conservancy projects have driven value-added growth in related industries and services such as manufacturing, construction and transportation, and boosted consumption of bulk industrial products such as building materials.

While driving economic growth, water conservancy project construction has promoted independent development of major water conservancy and hydropower equipment and key components, and enhanced reservoir and dam design and construction capabilities. In Guo Liyan's view, for the modern industrial system and new industrialization, water conservancy projects and related supporting project construction are important implementation scenarios. In particular, digital technology empowering water conservancy construction and digital twins supporting smart water network construction and operation reflect a direction in which new quality productive forces are taking shape at an accelerated pace.

Looking back at 2023, the achievements in water infrastructure construction are inspiring. Next, the Ministry of Water Resources will earnestly implement the decisions and deployments of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council, go all out to carry out post-disaster recovery and reconstruction in water conservancy and winter-spring water infrastructure construction, plan ahead and advance the 2024 targets and tasks, forge ahead with vigor and determination, promote high-quality water conservancy development in the new stage, and provide strong water security support for comprehensively advancing the building of a strong nation and the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation through Chinese-style modernization.