（Photo from CFP）

The Taihu Basin Authority of the Ministry of Water Resources recently released the 2023 water resources bulletin for an area of 245,000 square kilometers spanning the Taihu Lake and southeast rivers.

The basin area includes most of the southern part of Jiangsu Province, the land part of Shanghai, Zhejiang Province, Fujian Province (except for the Hanjiang River Basin), and part of Huangshan and Xuancheng in Anhui Province.

According to the bulletin, the basin area had a total population of 160.33 million in 2023 and a GDP of 23.7324 trillion yuan, accounting for 11.4% and 18.8% of the national total, respectively. The total water resources and water consumption reached 179.58 billion and 62.91 billion cubic meters, respectively, representing 7.0% and 10.7% of the national total. Essentially, the Taihu basin area contributed 18.8% of China’s GDP with 7.0% of the country’s water resources.

Furthermore, the basin area overlaps with the Yangtze River Delta, covering 135,000 square kilometers, about 37.8% of the entire delta region that encompasses Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Anhui and Shanghai. It boasts a population of 119.95 million and a GDP of 18.4539 trillion yuan, which represents 50.5% and 60.5% of the entire delta region’s total, respectively. The per capita GDP of 154,000 yuan is 1.2 times that of the entire delta region, and the water consumption of 47.31 billion cubic meters is 42.5% of that of the entire delta region.

Notably, the basin area includes the demonstration zone for eco-green integrated development in the Yangtze River Delta. This 2,413-square-kilometer demonstration zone consists of Shanghai's Qingpu District, Suzhou's Wujiang District in Jiangsu, and Jiaxing's Jiashan County in Zhejiang. This marked the first publication of such data related to the demonstration zone.