On June 2, Peng Qinghua, Secretary of the CPC Sichuan Provincial Committee and General River Chief of Sichuan, chaired and addressed the Sichuan Provincial General River Chief Plenary Session 2021. He stressed that we should thoroughly study and implement Xi Jinping thought on eco-civilization, fulfill the new development philosophy in a complete, precise, and comprehensive manner, keep "priorities of a country" in mind, maintain strategic focus, strengthen our leading roles and practically and strictly carry out works for lake chief system and river chief system so as to promote the continuous improvement of river and lake water quality of the province and ensure that water flows out of Sichuan towards the downstream in the east is clean and unpolluted.

　　Huang Qiang, Deputy Secretary of the CPC Sichuan Provincial Committee, Governor of People’s Government of Sichuan Province and General River Chief of Sichuan, attended and addressed the session; Deng Xiaogang, Deputy Secretary of the CPC Sichuan Provincial Committee and Deputy General River Chief of Sichuan, attended the session.

　　In the session, the spirit from General Secretary Xi Jinping's relevant important speeches and relevant meetings of CPC Central Committee and the State Council were conveyed, and all attendees studied The Yangtze River Protection Law of the People's Republic of China, watched the themed film The Typical Problems Identified in the First Round of River and Lake Chief System Related Secret Inquiries and Investigations Throughout Sichuan Province in 2021 and listened to reports on promoting works of river and lake chief system in Sichuan and other relevant major works.

　　In his speech, Peng Qinghua affirmed the achievements made in the full implementation of the river and lake chief system across Sichuan in recent years and deployed works for the next step. He pointed out that all departments should improve their respective political stance and thoroughly comprehend the new tasks and requirements for ecological civilization construction at a new stage of development. Since this year, General Secretary Xi Jinping has specified requirements many times on promoting ecological civilization construction and doing a better job in peak carbon dioxide emission and carbon neutrality, emphasizing that all parties should remain strategic focus on ecological civilization construction and strive to build up a modern society with harmonious coexistence between humans and nature. A systematic deployment for "driving green development and promoting harmonious coexistence between humans and nature" will be specially made in the national 14th Five-Year Plan and Long-Range Objectives Through the Year 2035. All these important instructions, requirements, and major deployments have shown us the way to better complete works of ecological civilization construction at a new stage of development. Departments at all levels are required to shoulder respective political responsibilities, strive to achieve harmonious coexistence between humans and nature, completely finish the tasks of carrying forward the river and lake chief system in an overall manner, speed up to promote the construction of beautiful Sichuan and constantly satisfy people's needs of a beautiful ecological environment.

　　Peng Qinghua pointed out that it's necessary to stick out a problem-oriented approach and comprehensively improve the level of river and lake protection and governance. Specifically, relevant departments should prioritize water environment governance, practically and effectively contributing to the central inspection work of ecological and environmental protection and rectifying ecological issues emerging in the Yangtze River Economic Belt, carrying out regular and standard combat against illegal riverway occupation, illegal sand excavation, illegal piling of waste and illegal construction to practically beef up the systematicness, integrity and synergy of river and lake management and protection. Meanwhile, they are required to strictly protect the river and lake water resources, enhancing the protection of drinking water sources, and quickening and promoting the construction of water-saving carriers, to establish provincial and municipal management and control unit systems for water distribution. Besides, these departments need to speed up the restoration of river and lake ecosystem, making continuous efforts to conduct provincial green campaigns in Sichuan, scientifically carrying forward the comprehensive governance for soil erosion reduction, and strictly implementing the fishing-banned system in the Yangtze River. Peng Qinghua called for intensified communication and cooperation on works of river and lake chief system between Sichuan and Chongqing, asking the two to create a model partnership concerning cross-basin and cross-regional ecological protection. Departments should stick to regulating rivers and lakes according to the laws and regulations and strengthen the mandatory restrictions for river and lake protection and governance. They also should continuously deepen the legal construction for river and lake management and protection, actively exploring regional coordinated legislation and timely rolling out protection regulations for key river basins, so as to form a system of policies and laws to support the river and lake chief system in Sichuan. Studying, promoting, and putting into action laws and regulations related to the protection of the Yangtze River should be practically and fully conducted to ensure that they produce the best possible results. Relevant departments are required to carry out strict law enforcement, supervision, and accountability, standardizing all development and construction activities, intensifying supervision on key regions, reinforcing inter-department coordination and joint enforcement, rigorously cracking down illegal conducts related to water, and tackling with laws the most-concerned and challenging problems blocking the river and lake protection and governance.

　　Peng Qinghua emphasized that all departments concerned should practically fulfill respective responsibilities and carry forward the implementation of the river and lake chief system to make a greater achievement. River and lake chiefs at all levels need to practically shoulder their own responsibilities, frequently carry out river and lake investigations, timely identify the problems and take part in the coordination to push the problems to be addressed. The offices of the river and lake system at all levels should continuously deepen the secret supervision, investigations, and inquiries by adhering to the principle of "not issuing written notifications, not reminding the local government, not receiving any report, and not accompanied by local officials, but directly inspecting grassroots and spots", expose the typical problems detected in time and enhance the assessment of implementation performance of river and lake chief system. All relevant departments should better fulfill their own legal responsibilities, focus on key issues to promote river and lake governance, and departments at all level should consolidate guarantees, take practical actions to solve the problems for river and lake management and protection in the "last mile", put more efforts to enhance publicity and further maximize people's awareness and responsibilities to take care of and protect the river and lake so as to build up a new pattern that all people make contributions to the river and lake chief system.

　　Huang Qiang pointed out in his speech that all parties are required to thoroughly study and implement Xi Jinping thought on eco-civilization, truly care about eco-civilization construction, and practically enhance the sense of responsibility and mission to do a better job for river and lake chief system, firmly bear political responsibilities of water caring and governance, stick to problem-, goal- and result-oriented approaches and persist in treating the water from sources, plug the governance loopholes and improve water governance capacity. It's required to put relevant works into practice, deeply advance the works for river and lake management and protection, implement in earnestness the instructions of central leaders, make continuous efforts to address the major problems that people concern and timely review the previous rectifications on prominent problems to strictly avoid re-occurrence and accelerate the construction of the rivers and lakes for people's well-being. From the perspective of responsibilities, it's asked to continuously improve the working capacity of river and lake management and protection, implement the requirements of "equal responsibility shared by the Party and government, one post with double responsibilities, multi-party collaborative management, and accountabilities in case of unfulfilled duties", resolutely get rid of "management with unwillingness and weakness" attitude, strengthen basic informatization construction and take a further step to enhance supervision and inspection and perfect incentive mechanism so as to firmly build a solid ecological barrier of the upper reaches of the Yangtze River and the Yellow River.

　　Provincial leaders that serve as provincial-level river and lake chiefs, as well as the heads from the provincial general river chief office, member units and relevant provincial departments, attended the session.