Xinhua Headlines: How a decade of dedicated protection is transforming China's mother river

BEIJING, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- For much of the past decades, China's longest river, the Yangtze, bore the costs of the country's economic growth. Stretches of the 6,300-kilometer mother river were choked by polluted water, declining biodiversity and mounting disaster risks. However, that trajectory began to shift a decade ago.

Today, water quality on the main stem of the once "seriously ill" river has reached leve