Yangtze River Economic Belt to become a new growth engine in China's 15th Five-Year Plan period

China's 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030) places renewed emphasis on advancing regional coordinated development. Among the priorities outlined is the continued promotion of high-quality development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt, which accounts for nearly half of the country's total economic output.

January 5, 2026 marks the tenth anniversary of Chinese President Xi Jinping's first symposium on the development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt – an event widely regarded as a pivotal moment in reshaping the development approach along the river.

As China enters the new five-year planning period, the economic corridor – which has China's most dynamic urban clusters and the most developed industrial systems – is expected to serve not only as a major engine of economic growth, but also as a core testing ground for a development model that reconciles ecological protection with innovation-driven growth.

Four symposia provide top-level planning

Since 2016, Xi has chaired four high-level symposia on the Yangtze River Economic Belt, providing strategic guidance at key stages of its development.

At the first symposium, held in Chongqing on January 5, 2016, Xi stressed that the belt's development must adhere to the principle of ecological priority and green development. He underscored that restoring the river's ecological environment should take precedence, urging officials to pursue "big protection, not big development."

The Yangtze River basin is a critical ecological lifeline, holding 35 percent of China's water resources and serving as a backbone of national ecological security. The 2016 meeting marked a clear break from earlier growth models that favored rapid industrial expansion over environmental protection, and it formally elevated the development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt to a national strategy.

Later that year, China issued the Outline of the Development Plan for the Yangtze River Economic Belt, laying out a comprehensive framework that combined ecological protection, innovation-driven industrial upgrading, integrated transport development, and improved regional coordination.

In subsequent symposiums held in Wuhan, Nanjing and Nanchang, Xi repeatedly reaffirmed the inseparable connection between environmental protection and high-quality development. At the most recent symposium, he emphasized the need to use scientific and technological innovation as a leading force, coordinating ecological conservation with economic and social progress to better support Chinese modernization.

Green development as the foundation

Over the past decade, China has introduced a series of policies and legal regulations covering pollution control, ecological restoration, biodiversity protection, and integrated river basin governance, transforming the concept of green development into a set of measurable outcomes along the Yangtze River.

In late 2018, China's central government launched the Yangtze River protection and restoration campaign, setting clear targets for water quality improvement. By the end of 2020, 96.7 percent of monitored sections in the basin had achieved good water quality, and the Yangtze River's mainstream reached Class II water quality along its entire length for the first time.

Institutional guarantees also followed. In 2021, China implemented a 10-year fishing ban across key waters of the river to restore aquatic ecosystems, and the Yangtze River Protection Law came into force the same year, providing a dedicated legal framework for river basin protection. Meanwhile, a comprehensive river and lake chief system was fully established along the Yangtze River, extending governance responsibilities down to the village level and embedding ecological protection into everyday administration.

The results are increasingly visible. According to official data, over the past decade, more than 1,300 illegal docks have been dismantled or rectified, more than 200,000 sewage outlets regulated, phosphorus pollution sharply reduced, and aquatic biodiversity steadily recovering. The population of the Yangtze finless porpoise – a flagship indicator species – has risen to 1,249, reflecting broader improvements in ecosystem health.

Innovation powers next phase growth

While green development has laid the foundation, technological innovation is emerging as the Yangtze River Economic Belt's new growth engine.

The economic corridor connects China's most innovation-intensive regions, linking the Yangtze River Delta, the middle reaches of the Yangtze, and the Chengdu-Chongqing region into a continuous corridor of scientific and industrial capacity. Since 2016, development along the belt has increasingly shifted toward innovation-driven growth.

In Shanghai, efforts are underway to strengthen its role as a global science and technology hub, anchored by advanced manufacturing and strategic emerging industries. Chengdu is building a full-chain innovation ecosystem that supports future industries such as humanoid robotics and bio-manufacturing. Hefei, meanwhile, has become a national leader in quantum science, translating frontier research into industrial clusters.

The Yangtze River Delta stands at the forefront of this transformation. Home to two comprehensive national science centers and a dense concentration of major scientific infrastructure, the region has moved beyond competition toward coordination.

Last year, regional legislatures jointly adopted a coordinated legislative decision on scientific and technological innovation, aiming to position the Delta as a global innovation hub. Complementary mechanisms, such as shared access to major research facilities and "use first, pay later" models for technology transfer, are accelerating the conversion of research outcomes into real productivity.

China's 15th Five-Year Plan proposals call for strengthening sci-tech innovation, advancing green transformation, and deepening regional coordination. In this context, the Yangtze River Economic Belt is not merely a regional development program, but a strategic platform for testing how high-level ecological protection can reinforce high-quality growth.