2 Yangtze Water Risks, Hotspots albeit higher than Chinas national average (No.79) and India (No.150). So while it has come far, it still has a long way to develop its sheer growth potential is tremendous. With much at stake, China has been acting to ensure the water security of the YREB to safeguard its future. The YREB is thus a core national strategy to seek new development pathways for long-term prosperity. However, since the YREB is an important manufacturing hub to many industries including global electronics and textiles, what happens to this river has global implications across multiple sectors. The following three chapters are intended to help stakeholders form an understanding of the policies along this river as well as the water-nomics framework to seek growth on less water and pollution. Chapter 1 focuses to the current status of water risks (physical and regulatory) as well as the climate risks ahead in the YREB. An understanding of these challenges plus the historical water-nomic performance of each of the 11 provinces that comprise the YREB hold the key to the identification of economic risks and hotspots. Chapter 2 walks you through how to identify water-nomic risk exposure and provides a case study on how a province can improve performance by changing its industry mix. The risk exposure of city clusters and industrial parks are also covered here. Great risk brings great opportunity; the last chapter focuses on opportunities ahead arising from combating pollution in the YREB, including industries that will likely be on the less favoured or more favoured lists. Since these water-nomic risks are often hidden from the public, we hope that this report helps stakeholders navigate current and future regulatory shocks from the march toward a Beautiful China. YREB vs the Rest of the World 2017 GDP Top 20 (current US$) Population Top 20 GDP Per Capita Top 20 Source: China Water Risk based on World Bank, NBSC Note: for YREB GDP , the 2017 yearly average exchange rate between USD and CNY (7.030) from Internal Revenue Service of the US is used.Yangtze Water Risks, Hotspots moreover, the sheer size of the region makes it a monumental challenge. Nevertheless, failure is clearly not an option. It pays to remember whats at stake when weighing the seriousness of the government in enforcing policies along the Yangtze. Chemicals these amounted to a total of 0.54 million km 2 . For perspective, this is 6.5% larger than the land area of Thailand. Almost all (95.3%) of these areas are inland; the rest are along the coast and in the sea. These provincial plans have all been approved by the State Council. National parks are also being set up to protect upper watersheds. One such in the source region of the Yangtze, Yellow and Lancang (Upper Mekong) River is nearly the size of Bangladeshs land area more on this in Chapter 1 “A hotter future with more rain = Need more resilience” have found an answer to this in sponge cities. In April 2015, 16 cities were selected as pilot cities. These cities can in the next three years gain access to funding to help with their sponge city development: municipalities directly under the Central Government can access RMB600 million/year, provincial capital cities RMB500 million/year, the rest RMB400 million/year. A year later, a further 14 cities were selected to be pilot cities, including Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai and Shenzhen 4 . Of the 30 national sponge city pilots, 12 of these are in the YREB more on this in Chapter 2 “Water risk exposure of 5 city clusters house to 405 million people”. river chief system in Wuxi City. Other provinces/cities started to adopt the method and by 11 December 2016, the Opinions on Fully Promoting the River Chief Mechanism was released river chief mechanism must be fully established by 2018 5 . ensure strict implementation of environmental regulation. There are four key levels of river chiefs, which are: provincial, city, county and township in descending order of power. In addition, river chiefs are also assigned at the village level 5 . As of January 2019, there were over 1.23 million river chiefs across China, 75.6% of which are at village level. Such village level monitoring could help clean up tributaries More on this Chapter 1 - “Yangtze overall water quality improving but tributaries are not meeting targets”. YREBs Eco-Redline areas are 6.5% larger than the land area of Thailand 30 national sponge city .12 are in the YREB There are 1.23mn river chiefs across China . .over three- quarters of these are at village level