China releases first national water report

BEIJING -- The first national report on China's water conditions was released Tuesday by the Ministry of Water Resources and the National Bureau of Statistics.

The nationwide survey covered river conditions, water conservancy projects, water consumption, river development and management, and water and soil conservation in 2011.

China has 45,203 rivers each covering an area of at least 50 square kilometers, totaling 1.51 million kilometers in length. Some 2,865 lakes with a regular surface area of over 1 square kilometer took up 78,000 square kilometers, the report said.

The capacity of 98,002 reservoirs amounted to 932.31 billion cubic meters and the total installed capacity of 333 million kilowatts were generated by 46,758 hydropower stations.

The irrigation area reached 1 billion mu (66.8 million hectares), according to the report.