Chinese President Xi Jinping and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban are set to hold small-group talks with their respective delegations in Budapest on Thursday afternoon.
Xi, who arrived in the Hungarian capital late on Wednesday, is on a state visit to the Central European country at the invitation of Hungarian President Tamas Sulyok and Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
Hungary marks the last leg of Xi's three-nation European tour from May 5 to 10, which has already taken him to France and Serbia.
Xi, Orban to hold small-group talks in Budapest
A total of 11 tech groups from the Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) are conducting the sampling mission in 16 provinces in the Yangtze River Basin from April to June this year to monitor the ecological environment in the longest river in China.
Researchers were collecting samples of aquatic organisms in the Poyang Lake section of the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River.
Poyang Lake is the largest lake that is connected to the Yangtze River in the middle and lower reaches.
It is an important spawning and feeding ground for fish in the Yangtze River, and also an important habitat for rare aquatic organisms such as finless porpoises. It plays an important role in maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem structure in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River.
"We need to monitor the basic water quality parameters, as well as three major categories: phytoplankton, zooplankton, and benthic organisms. We collect samples from the bottom, the middle, and the surface, in order to identify the distribution of organisms across various levels. The white organisms (in the bottle) that occasionally jump are zooplankton," said Hu Sheng, senior engineer of the Yangtze River Basin Ecological Environment Supervision and Administration Bureau.
In order to ensure the quality, the samples were screened and sealed immediately after collection, and then taken to the monitoring ship for fixation.
Nowadays it is common to see finless porpoises in the Yangtze River. According to statistics, the number of finless porpoises in the Yangtze River has reached 1,249, achieving a historic rebound.
"The finless porpoise is the flagship species in the Yangtze River and the species at the top of the food chain. When the fish population recovers and the finless porpoises have more food, its population will also increase," said Zhang Jing, senior engineer of the Yangtze River Basin Ecological Environment Supervision and Administration Bureau.
The pilot monitoring of water ecology assessment in the Yangtze River Basin began in 2022 and has been carried out for three consecutive years, and this year is the last pilot year.
"In the next step, we will conduct a comprehensive and systematic analysis and evaluation of the monitoring data to lay a good foundation for the formal water ecological assessment work in the Yangtze River Basin next year," said Xu Chong, head of the Yangtze River Basin Ecological Environment Supervision and Administration Bureau.
China conducts last pilot ecological assessment in Yangtze River
