Companies focus on ecological protection of Yangtze River Delta region

A number of leading Chinese companies, including China Three Gorges Corp, Alibaba Group and Huawei Technologies Co formed an alliance on Wednesday to foster ecological protection in the Yangtze River Delta region.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has recently called for efforts to be made in integrated development of the Yangtze River Delta, including efforts to consolidate green development of the region, with priority given to the protection and restoration of the Yangtze River's ecological environment.

The delta region consists of the provinces of Jiangsu, Anhui and Zhejiang as well as Shanghai, accounting for about 40 percent of China's total economic output.

The US-China Green Fund and global accounting firm PwC are among the foreign entities participating in the program.

Ma Jun, director of the Beijing-based Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, said the involvement of some of China's largest companies in the strategy could help nurture new growth points from ecological projects.

"Those companies have rich experience in the digital economy, IT, smart cities and communication services to inject into this ecological protection of the delta region," Ma told the Global Times on Wednesday, noting that green concepts eventually need to materialize in the form of concrete projects.

"The delta region is at the forefront of the ecological protection of the Yangtze River. If successful practices and business models can come from this pilot program, they can be copied in other regions along the Yangtze River," noted Ma.

"The project could not be accomplished by a single company as the protection of the Yangtze River is a national project," read a statement sent to the Global Times by China Three Gorges Corp.

After severe summer floods this year, the company said it would intensify its water conservancy projects with pipelines and networks.

The company said it has completed check-up work on 7,000 kilometers of pipelines and spotted 330,000 weak links. A total of 450 kilometers were newly built, the company said. The protection of the delta region offers new venues of investment, and China Three Gorges Corp said its projects with six localities in East China's Anhui Province are worth 15.1 billion ($2.2 billion) yuan.