China reports drop in water, sediment runoff in major rivers

China saw significant drops in the volumes of water and sediment runoff in its major rivers last year, according to a recent report from the Ministry of Water Resources.

In 2023, the general runoff volume recorded in representative hydrological stations on the country's major watercourses stood at 1,066 billion cubic meters, down by 25 percent from the multi-year average of 1,428 billion cubic meters, a media release from the ministry said on Wednesday.

If compared with the volume in 2022, the ratio of decrease reached 20 percent, it added.

These representative stations reported a total of 204 million metric tons of sediment runoff in 2023, compared with the multi-year average of 1.45 billion tons and 390 million tons in 2022, it said.

The water runoff of the Yangtze River, Asia's longest river, represented 63 percent of the total water runoff volume registered in all representative hydrological stations last year, it said.

It said the representative stations on the Yellow River, the country's second-longest river, reported the highest density of sediment of 3.53 kilograms in every cubic meter of water.