From January 5 to the morning of January 6, the National Water Conservancy Work Conference was held in Beijing. The conference required that, in order to achieve systematic advancement and holistic improvement of water governance and management capacity during the 15th Five-Year Plan period and ensure decisive progress toward basically realizing water conservancy modernization, six strategic tasks must be implemented.

First, make decisive progress in basically modernizing the flood and drought disaster prevention system and capacity. Accelerate the transformation of traditional concepts and models of flood governance and management, improve the basin flood control engineering system, the rainfall and water regime monitoring and forecasting system, and the flood and drought disaster prevention work system, and build systematic solutions for flood control, flood utilization, and flood shaping.

Second, make decisive progress in accelerating the construction of a modern water network. Build the "framework" of the water network, weave the "mesh" of the water network more densely, and consolidate the "nodes" of the water network, accelerating the construction of a modern water network that is "systematically complete and safe and reliable, intensive and efficient, green and intelligent, smoothly circulating, and orderly regulated."

Third, make decisive progress in comprehensively building a protection and governance system for tranquil rivers, living rivers, and happy rivers. Building tranquil rivers means both preventing widespread flooding and effectively controlling river floods, and preventing human encroachment on and damage to rivers; building living rivers means both maintaining the basic flow requirements of rivers to ensure they do not run dry, and maintaining the basic morphology of river channels to ensure they do not shrink; building happy rivers means both enhancing the sense of well-being of the main entities of river ecosystems and enhancing the sense of well-being of people who benefit from rivers, achieving harmonious coexistence between people and rivers.

Fourth, make decisive progress in building a digital twin water conservancy system. Adhere to the principles of "demand-driven, application-first, digital-intelligent empowerment, and capacity enhancement," improve the integrated space-air-ground-water-engineering monitoring and perception system, the "high-fidelity" digital flow field simulation mathematical model system, and the utility-oriented digital twin platform, and systematically plan and advance the construction of digital twin basins, digital twin water networks, and digital twin projects.

Fifth, make decisive progress in improving the system for economical and intensive utilization of water resources. Implement the requirements of "four waters and four determinations," deeply carry out the national water-saving action, and improve the rigid constraint system for water resources as well as the institutional systems for water-saving efficiency improvement in agriculture, water-saving and emission reduction in industry, and water-saving and loss reduction in urban areas.

Sixth, make decisive progress in strengthening the institutional, mechanism, and rule-of-law management system for water conservancy. Strengthen the water conservancy scientific and technological innovation system, the water conservancy management institutional system, the market-oriented institutional system, and the water conservancy rule-of-law system, complete on schedule the water conservancy reform tasks deployed by the Third Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee, and comprehensively enhance the capacity for modernized water conservancy governance.

The conference required that 2026 is the opening year of the 15th Five-Year Plan, and it is necessary to effectively link the water conservancy development goals for the next five years with the water conservancy work in 2026, step up efforts in all aspects of work, build a modern flood and drought disaster prevention system, accelerate the construction of a modern water network, consolidate the water conservancy foundation for agricultural and rural modernization, build tranquil rivers, living rivers, and happy rivers, systematically plan and advance the construction of the digital twin water conservancy system, improve the water-saving institutional and policy system, vigorously promote water conservancy scientific and technological innovation, strengthen institutional, mechanism, and rule-of-law management, persistently advance full and rigorous Party self-governance, and ensure that the 15th Five-Year Plan gets off to a good start and makes a good beginning.