by H.E. Mr. Li Guoying
Minister of Water Resources of the People’s Republic of China
December 2, 2025
Distinguished President,
Dear Guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
The 19th World Water Congress sets its focus on “Water in a Changing World: Innovation and Adaptation”, which is not only of practical urgency but also holds long-term strategic importance. What stands out in today’s changing world is the unprecedented climate change, bringing flood as one of the most influential phenomenon to mankind. How to adapt to the changing environment and address the challenges posed by extreme weather conditions? What should be the future direction of the relationship between humans and flood? These are questions that urgently require new and good answers.
Throughout the ages, the development of human civilization has been accompanied by the struggle against flood. People always regarded flood as menacing forces or dreadful monster, because the traditional perception of flood has been limited to the damage of flood. So the measures implemented to address flood have primarily aimed at “preventing the damage caused by flood”.
In 2014, Presidend Xi Jinping took a pioneering step in putting forward the water governance principles of “prioritizing water conservation, balancing spatial distribution, taking systematic approaches and promoting government-market synergy”, guiding China's water governance practices to promote managing water-related disasters, resources, environment and ecology in a coordinated manner. With the guidance of these principles, Chinese water governance achieved great success and transformation.
Chinese water governance practice and experience demonstrate that the understanding of flood should not be confined to their destructive nature but should also be extended to their resource value and beneficial function. In other words, the essential attributes of flood should include its disaster risks, resource value and beneficial function.
To be specific, the hazard of flood lies in the enormous natural destructive power they release in a short period of time; its resource value stems from the fact that they are essentially water resources, which are indispensable for economic and social development at all times; the beneficial functionality of flood consists in the fact that they are the most important influence factor of river ecosystems, with functions such as channel bed-forming, providing habitats for aquatic organisms' reproduction, preventing the seawater intrusion, and overflowing water supply for river delta ecosystems.
Correct understanding of the nature of flood is the prerequisite for the scientific prevention and management of flood. Guided by President Xi Jinping’s philosophy on water governance, Ministry of Water Resources of the People’s Republic of China has established a three-dimensional understanding of the nature of flood, and based on this, has explored and practiced three flood management models, namely flood control, flood utilization and flood tailoring.
I. Flood Control
Given the harmfulness of flood, we should firmly adhere to the effective control of flood at all times. We should adhere to the principle of prioritizing prevention and taking prevention as the mainstay. We should firmly follow the patterns of flood occurrence and evolution, strengthen forecasting, early warning, rehearsing and contingency planning, and conduct systematic, scientific, and safe operations of water-control projects in the river basin. We should implement fine operation schedule of the “one cubic meter per second of discharge, one cubic meter per second of storage and one centimeter of water level”, and proactively, effectively and accurately control flood volume, flood peaks and flood process, thus effectively safeguarding people’s lives and property.
Over the past five years, we have successfully defended against 3,981 river flood exceeding the warning levels, and overcome some unprecedented flood disasters on major rivers such as the Yangtze River, the Yellow River, the Haihe River, and the Pearl River. We have protected 7,840 towns and 545,100 hectares of farmland from flooding, and avoided the relocation of 43.51 million people. Thus, the proportion of loss caused by flood to the country’s GDP has decreased from 0.28% in the previous five years to 0.18%.
II. Flood Utilization
Based on the resource value of flood, we analyze regional water supply-demand gaps, balance flood control and ecological water supply in advance. During the flood seasons, we scientifically determine the operational level of reservoirs and dynamically redistribute flood water in time and space in a safe and controllable manner. These measures optimize regional water resource allocation efficiency, converts flood into sustainable water supply for production, life and ecological use, and make flood into water resource for the integrated ecological and economic benefits.
In September 2025, the Hanjiang River experienced extremely complex and volatile flood. With advance prediction, we coordinated autumn flood defense and floodwater utilization, dynamically adjusted water-project scheduling operations, and stored in the Danjiangkou Reservoir 27.2 billion m³ of water, securing ample water for the Middle Route of the South-to-North Water Diversion Project.
III. Flood Tailoring
Considering the beneficial functions of flood, we correctly comprehend the runoff evolution laws of upstream and downstream reaches as well as main stems and tributaries in the basins, and, through the joint operations, we can tailor or make some controllable flood processes with specific flow rates and duration that match the water demand of river ecosystem. By utilizing the inherent energy of flood, we restore and preserve the healthy, stable, and vibrant river landform and ecological functions, thereby reviving the rivers and restoring vitality to the basin.
In the Yellow River, we regularly carry out the water-sediment regulation scheme by using man-made density currents. That is to say, flood tailoring is used to scour the downstream main channel and carry suspended sediment to the Yellow River Estuary. This has significantly extended the service life of Xiaolangdi Reservoir’s sediment-storage capacity, made the river channel deepened by 3.1 meters, and increased its minimum conveyance capacity from less than 1,800 m³/s to 5,000 m³/s. The transport of suspended sediment solved the root problem of the mainstream channel narrowing due to the sedimentation, and the tailored controllable flood overflowed the Yellow River Delta wetland. Therefore, the river ecosystems which was once destroyed has been improved.
In 2022, the Yangtze River Estuary experienced unprecedented seawater intrusion. We used flood tailoring in the Three Gorges Reservoir, located 1,900 kilometers away. We used the flood process with the precise timing control, and effectively prevented the sea tide from flowing upstream and ensured urban water supplies. In the Yangtze River Basin, we carry out water division and ecological regulation through cascaded reservoir plants, and create flood process with approximately 6,000 m³/s of flow to make a good natural spawning conditions for drift-spawning fishes such as Chinese Jinsha Cobitidae and Coreius guichenoti.
Flood control, flood utilization, and flood tailoring constitute a complex systemic project with in-depth mutual contribution, demanding a high level of prescience and precision, so we must build a strong support system for them.
We must build a rainfall condition monitoring and forecasting system.
We should develop a "three-line defense" system made of rainfall and water regime monitoring and forecasting, consisting of meteorological satellites, weather radars and hydro-logical rainfall measurement radars, rainfall stations, and hydro-logical stations. We should establish a flood forecasting system integrating multi-source spatial information to achieve an effective unification of extending flood forecasting period and improving the accuracy of flood forecasting.
We must establish a frame of area or basin demand-side research work.
According to the multiple attributes of flood, the integrity of ecosystem and the systematic nature of the river basin, we must do deep research on the pattern of water demand for river channel formation, sediment transport, water security for production and life, seawater upstream flow and river ecosystem building and so on, to provide a fundamental support for flood control, flood utilization, and flood tailoring.
We must develop a modernized national water infrastructure system.
We should make a scientific plan for water management, considering all the goals of planning, designing, construction and operation. We should reasonably determine project standards and scales, optimize layout, structure, function and system integration. We should develop a comprehensive and systematic water network integrating flood disaster prevention, integrated water resources allocation and urban-rural water supply security.
We must set up a strong support system for joint scheduling and decision-making.
In order to provide precise, forward-looking and scientific support for safe decision-making, we are promoting the development of digital twin river basin, digital twin water network and digital twin construction project, improving the "sky-ground-water-engineering" integrated monitoring and sensing system, and the "high-fidelity" digital flow field simulation mathematical model system; and we are developing deduction of the sequence, timing, methods and scale of engineering scheduling through "forward-reverse-forward" analysis on the digital twin platform.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Based on President Xi Jinping’s thought on water governance and China’s practice on flood control, we, therefore, in order to achieve the goal of the harmonious coexistence between humans and flood, propose that:
We should recognize and understand the hazard, resource value and beneficial function of flood; we should accelerate the transformation of traditional approach and pattern of flood control; and we should coordinate development and security, and establish a systemic solution scheme of flood control, flood utilization and flood tailoring.
Thank you.
Source: INTCE