In the first half of this year, China secured 783.2 billion yuan in investment for water conservancy construction nationwide and completed 525.4 billion yuan of investment; among these, 24 major water conservancy projects broke ground, the most for the same period in history.

On July 12, Vice Minister of Water Resources Wang Daoxi said at a press conference on the progress and achievements of water conservancy infrastructure construction in the first half of 2023 that since the beginning of this year, China has made every effort to accelerate water conservancy infrastructure construction and deepen reform of water conservancy investment and financing. The scale of water conservancy infrastructure construction is larger than the same period last year, and progress is better than the same period last year, with the momentum of water conservancy development continuously strengthening.

The meeting noted that in the first half of the year, 17,600 new water conservancy projects were launched nationwide, with an investment scale of 720.8 billion yuan, 3,707 more projects and 111.3 billion yuan more in investment scale than the same period last year. Among them, 1,095 projects had an investment scale exceeding 100 million yuan. At present, 24 major projects, including the Jilin Water Network backbone project, the Hebei Xiong'an Main Canal, the Fujian Kinmen water supply project, the Sichuan Sanba Reservoir, the Anhui Fenghuangshan Reservoir, the Jiangxi Poyang Lake Kangshan Flood Storage and Detention Area, and the Guangxi Xialiujia Irrigation District, have started construction on schedule, accelerating the building of national, regional, and provincial water network engineering systems.

In the first half of the year, China secured 783.2 billion yuan in water conservancy construction investment, 35.2 billion yuan more than the same period last year, an increase of 4.7%. Among this, 476.2 billion yuan came from central and local fiscal funds, accounting for 61% of the total secured investment; 307 billion yuan came from local government special bonds, bank loans, and social capital, accounting for 39% of the total secured investment. In terms of implementation across regions, 22 provinces secured more than 10 billion yuan in investment, among which 8 provinces—Zhejiang, Anhui, Hubei, Guangdong, Sichuan, Jiangxi, Yunnan, and Jiangsu—exceeded 40 billion yuan, strongly guaranteeing the funding needs for large-scale water conservancy construction.

In the first half of the year, China made every effort to accelerate the progress of water conservancy project construction, with completed investment increasing by 18.1% year on year. Since the beginning of the year, various regions have seized favorable opportunities for water conservancy construction and arranged project construction in advance. Starting in March, monthly completed investment exceeded 100 billion yuan and increased month by month, with completed investment in June alone reaching 114.9 billion yuan. From January to June, China completed 525.4 billion yuan of water conservancy construction investment, an increase of 18.1% year on year. Among this, five provinces—Guangdong, Hebei, Yunnan, Zhejiang, and Shandong—completed more than 30 billion yuan of investment.

In addition, water conservancy projects have a large number of starts and a strong capacity to absorb employment, and large-scale water conservancy construction has directly provided a large number of jobs. In the first half of the year, water conservancy project construction absorbed 1.3834 million employed people and paid 21.308 billion yuan in wages to employed personnel.

Wang Daoxi said that next steps will focus on the goal of accelerating the building of a national water network that is "systematically complete and safe and reliable, intensive and efficient, green and intelligent, smoothly circulating, and orderly in regulation," with emphasis on networking, filling gaps, and strengthening chains to accelerate water conservancy infrastructure construction. This year, around the "outline" of the national water network, efforts will be made to accelerate the follow-up projects of the South-to-North Water Diversion and major cross-basin and cross-regional water resource allocation projects. First, vigorously promote high-quality development of the follow-up projects of the South-to-North Water Diversion and promptly complete the revision of the master plan for the South-to-North Water Diversion Project. Accelerate the construction of the middle route's Yangtze-to-Han River water diversion project and the middle route flood control safety guarantee project. Deepen feasibility study demonstration for the second phase of the eastern route, promote preparation of the planning for the western route, and launch feasibility study work for early-stage implementation projects. Second, actively advance major cross-basin and cross-regional water resource allocation projects and backbone flood control projects for major rivers and large lakes, accelerate the construction progress of a number of ongoing national water network backbone projects such as the Guangdong water resources allocation around the Beibu Gulf, the second phase of the Yangtze-to-Huaihe water diversion, the Central Yunnan water diversion, the second phase of the Huaihe River sea-entering channel, and flood control management of the lower Yellow River, and also advance preliminary work for major water diversion projects such as the Gansu Bailongjiang water diversion and the Sichuan Dadu River-to-Min River water diversion, striving to approve them for construction as soon as possible. It is necessary to implement compliance construction of important dikes on the seven major rivers and achieve full compliance of the Taihu Lake surrounding dike by the end of the year. At the same time, around the "meshes" of the national water network, promote the construction of provincial, municipal, and county-level water networks; around the "knots" of the national water network, promote the construction of controlling storage projects.