Yangtze River Protection Law

The Yangtze River Protection Law (长江保护法, Chángjiāng Bǎohù Fǎ) is the People's Republic of China's first legislation targeting protection of a specific river basin. It was adopted by the Standing Committee of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC) on 26 December 2020 and entered into force on 1 March 2021. Comprising nine chapters and 96 articles, the law operationalises President Xi Jinping's directive that the Yangtze Economic Belt must pursue "大保护" (great protection) rather than "大开发" (large-scale development), first articulated at the January 2016 Chongqing symposium and reiterated at Wuhan (2018) and Nanjing (2020). The statute is anchored in the constitutional ecological-civilisation mandate written into Article 89 and the 2018 constitutional preamble, and it complements the Environmental Protection Law (2014) and the later Yellow River Protection Law (2022), which it served as the template for.

The law establishes a basin-wide coordination mechanism led by the central government, overriding the fragmented provincial and departmental jurisdiction that previously hampered governance of the 6,300-kilometre river spanning 19 provincial-level units. Its core features include a statutory ten-year fishing ban (十年禁渔) on the Yangtze's main stream and key tributaries from 1 January 2021, mandatory ecological flow guarantees, a "negative list" for industrial siting that prohibits new chemical plants within one kilometre of the shoreline, red-line zoning for ecological conservation, and a basin ecological-compensation (生态补偿) regime transferring fiscal resources from downstream to upstream provinces. It codifies the principle that protection takes precedence over development, imposes joint river-chief (河长制) accountability, and prescribes heavier penalties—including punitive damages and lifetime bans—for illegal sand mining, pollutant discharge and overfishing.

By 2026 the law is treated as the flagship case of "basin governance by law" (流域依法治理) and a model for integrated environmental legislation. Reported outcomes include the resettlement of over 110,000 fishing households, measurable recovery of finless porpoise populations, and the relocation or rectification of thousands of riverside chemical enterprises under the "化工围江" (chemical encirclement) clean-up. The statute interlocks with the Yangtze Economic Belt strategy—one of China's three major regional development strategies alongside the Belt and Road and Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei coordination—and with national carbon-peaking and carbon-neutrality goals.

For the China Guokao and provincial shenlun (申论) examinations, this law is a high-value reference. In the China Governance & Policy paper it is tested as evidence of "ecological civilisation" (生态文明) institutionalisation and the shift from GDP-first to green development; candidates should pair it with the "two mountains" theory (绿水青山就是金山银山). In shenlun essay writing it supplies a concrete, citable example for arguments on coordinated regional development, rule-of-law governance, and the balance between protection and growth. Typical question angles ask candidates to analyse the institutional innovation of basin-wide coordination, evaluate the fishing ban's social trade-offs, or use the law to illustrate how legislation translates top-level political directives into enforceable governance.