A modern anti-flood system is expected to be built along the Yangtze River, the longest in China, in next five years, said the Yangtze River Water Resources Committee.

An official with the committee said that the water directing system will be a high-tech one composed of an automatic hydrology testing system, an alarm system and an information collection network.

The official said the system will be able to report timely hydrology information from all major areas and reservoirs along the Yangtze River.

The anti-flood system is one of China's series of anti-flood projects being planned for the Yangtze River.

The committee said that, based on the problems exposed during the big flood in the Yangtze River in 1998, it has made an anti-flood program for the river with a package of anti-flood projects to be launched in the future.

The committee said it will further promote the construction of flood-reporting and information-transmitting systems along the river and strengthen protective legislation in the coming years.

A heavy flood swept through the Yangtze River valley in south China and the Songhua and Nenjiang river valleys in north China in the summer of 1998, destroying property valued at more than 264 billion yuan (31.9 billion US dollars).

One of the world's longest rivers, the 6,300-kilometre-long Yangtze flows through Qinghai, Tibet, Yunnan, Sichuan, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, Anhui, Jiangsu and Shanghai, where it empties into the East China Sea.

(Xinhua News Agency March 19, 2005)