The themed reporting trip named "a thousand miles along the mother river (a nickname for Qiantangjiang River)"on Zhejiang's environmental protection progresses commenced at Hangzhou Jiuxi reservoir on August 19, 2005.

This environment reporting trip composed of journalists from 21 news groups, including eight national ones, would tour downward the Qiantangjiang River, taking a close look at the magnificent progress done to the water protection in Zhejiang Province.

The trip covering nine counties and cities in the Province including Yuhang, Tonglu, Kaihua, Chanshan, Quzhou, Jinhua, Yiwu, Shaoxing, and Huzhou, aims to raise the public environment protection awareness and further enhance the local efforts for environmental protection.

On Friday morning, Gao Haihao, the director of Zhejiang provincial information office announced the grand opening of the 10 day reporting journey, saying, "Zhejiang Province environment authorities put the environment protection high on our working agenda and spare no efforts on balancing the economy development and the environment protection."

Present at the opening press meeting was also the vice director of Zhejiang Environmental Protection Bureau Wu Yuchen who addressed the press urging a sustainable development of the province's economy.

According to provincial statistics, there are 8 national development zones and 54 provincial economic development zones in Zhejiang with a total investment of 54.98 billion yuan for infrastructure and an area of 491.5 square kilometers. These development zones have become hot spots for domestic and foreign investors.

In 2002, the provincial GDP rose to 767 billion yuan, 12.3 percent up on the previous year and 4.3 percent higher than the average growth rate in the country. The per capita GDP was 16,570 yuan.

The total fiscal revenue and local fiscal revenue were respectively 116.7 billion yuan and 56.7 billion yuan. The GDP, per capita GDP and total fiscal revenue all stood 4th in the whole nation.

The overall environment situation ranks the third in the country, only after Tibet Autonomous Region and Hainan Province.

(China Daily August 30, 2005)