China's consistent efforts to protect the Yangtze River have helped Asia's longest watercourse turn the corner on conservation, a senior official at the Ministry of Ecology and Environment said. Xu Chong, head of the ministry's bureau that oversees the river, also said the marked environmental improvement in the waterway has been done in parallel with development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt. As a key indicator of the achievement, the Yangtze last year saw the quality of water at all monitored sections in its mainstream rated at Grade II or above. Grade II is the second highest in the five-tier assessment system. "The entire Yangtze basin unprecedentedly got rid of water below Grade V (the poorest quality) by the end of 2020," he said in an exclusive interview with China Daily. According to the ministry's 2015 environmental quality bulletin, only 45.2 percent of
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