Five years into a ten-year fishing ban, the Yangtze basin has passed its first formal audit with a split verdict. Fish stocks have rebounded faster than expected; the river’s broader ecology has not. A midterm review covering river life, social support and law enforcement found the Yangtze in ‘early recovery after a serious illness’. The bleeding has stopped; the healing has yet to begin.
the report card
Fish stocks have rebounded faster than the ban’s designers expected. From 2021–25, surveys recorded 351 species in the basin, 43 more than before the ban. Mainstream stocks recovered to double their pre-ban level. The four major farmed species (black carp, grass carp, silver carp and bighead carp) are spawning at 7.1 times former rates; the tapertail anchovy 7.5 times.
This was independently confirmed in February 2026, when a multi-institution study published in Science, drawing on data from 57 sites monitored 2018–23, found that the ban had halted some 70 years of decline in freshwater biodiversity. Total fish biomass rose by a median of 209 percent; large fish biomass by 232 percent.
total biomass and large-fish biomass both rose sharply after 2021
The aquatic life integrity index, which measures whole-river health, has risen two grades from ‘no fish’, the bottom of a six-grade official scale denoting functional collapse rather than literal absence. The mainstream river now sits at ‘poor’, with three grades to climb.
Confirming that reading, the finless porpoise population reached 1,249 in 2022, its first recorded turn from decline, and by 2025 had risen to 1,426. Sitting high in the food chain, this porpoise is a proxy for recovery on the way.
species shares shifted after the ban, not just total numbers
The finless porpoise reinforces that reading. Its population reached 1,249 in 2022, the first recorded turn from decline, and by 2025 had risen to 1,426. Sitting high in the food chain, the porpoise is a proxy for whether recovery is moving up through the river’s web of life. The signs are that it is.
the ban’s limits
Fish stocks have bounced back faster than river ecology. Age groups, species balance and broader biostability will take longer to rebuild than raw biomass.
There has been progress beyond the river. Three generations of Chinese sturgeon have been artificially bred, and sequencing its genome is the first for an octoploid (an animal with eight complete sets of chromosomes, versus the usual two). Captive survival is possible. Wild breeding, experts judge, is unlikely to return before the ban ends in 2031.
The sturgeon also marks the outer boundary of what a fishing ban can do. Reduced fishing pressure cannot undo what the Gezhouba and Three Gorges dams have done to migration and spawning over decades. Microplastics, new pollutants and more extreme weather will all bear on what the next five years can achieve.
the ban stands or falls on shore
Easing former fishers off the water and into stable livelihoods is the policy’s hardest task. Some 231,000 have been registered and moved out of the fishing industry. Some 141,000 have found jobs; 220,000 receive pensions; 12,000 in hardship have been afforded basic support. On paper, resettlement is largely over.
Less so in practice. Over 60 percent of former fishers are 50+; most have junior middle school education only, and many are landless. Re-employment rates are high, reports Shanghai Ocean University’s Gao Xiaoling 高小玲, but their jobs are mainly casual: day labour, small trade, farming, aquaculture, and self-employment. Incomes and security remain fragile.
employment distribution of registered former Yangtze fishers in ten provinces by end 2022
By late 2022, flexible work accounted for 73 percent of registered former fishers in the sample; casual work was the largest category. The headline job rate masks wide variation in job quality.
A second Shanghai Ocean University study, by Zheng Jianming 郑建明 identifies the gap: whether fishers can build stable new lives depends on health, the size of the family workforce, social ties and access to training. Public jobs, river patrol roles and conservation posts can absorb those with poor options. Training, job matching and local industry links determine whether placement becomes permanent.
Baishuigang village in Yidu, Hubei, displays what is possible. All 186 former fishing households have shifted into new work; collective business income reached C¥1.01m (~US$ 139,000) in 2025, and per head income rose from C¥20,000 (~US$ 2,760) in 2019 to nearly C¥30,000 (~US$ 4140). The village has recast itself around Yangtze ecology tourism and river patrol work.
poachers and patrols
Enforcement has improved but faces new pressure. Illegal fishing fell 65 percent from 2021 to 2025; fishing-related criminal cases fell 26 percent. As stocks recover, poaching seems irresistible. Offenders use drones, night-vision equipment and speedboats, crossing jurisdictions with greater stealth.
A double challenge is faced in the next five years: preventing relapses in the ecology and in regional poverty. The past five years confirmed that fishers could be eased out. The next five years must deliver lasting livelihoods.
from banning to healing
The 2026 Government Work Report urged real biodiversity protection and full delivery of the ten-year ban. The ban’s midterm review team set out what that means in practice: the next five years should shift from enforcement to habitat restoration, lake-river reconnection, and rebuilding spawning grounds.
Reconnecting isolated lakes to the river is critical: lake-river separation, alongside overfishing, is one of two factors researchers identify as most damaging to aquatic biodiversity, and restoring that hydrological link would accelerate recovery in both the lakes and the main stream. A 2026 ministry action plan sets out sets out 60 measures to that end, with wetland and ecological shoreline restoration among the priorities. The coming five years present the last window for pulling the Chinese sturgeon and other endangered species back from the brink.
The Yangtze is emerging as Beijing’s exhibit of state-led conservation at scale that it will draw on as it seeks to shape global biodiversity governance. The lesson worth exporting is the one that comes before it: a river that needs a full ban has already waited too long.
the reel experts
Cao Wenxuan 曹文宣 | Chinese Academy of Sciences academician, ichthyologist
In 2006, Cao became the first scientist to propose a ten-year Yangtze fishing ban. He argued that overfishing and ecological deterioration threatened ‘water security’, a term covering both the river’s biological integrity and its role as a freshwater resource. A ten-year ban, in his view, was the minimum needed to cover three breeding cycles and allow stocks to rebound. The greatest policy distortion, he contends, is diesel subsidies for fishing boats, which kept fishers in a sector they should have left. Unregulated water control along tributaries, he adds, has done comparable damage to river ecosystems.
A fisheries scientist at CAS (Chinese Academy of Sciences) Institute of Hydrobiology, Cao was elected a CAS Academician in 1997. From the 1970s, he led research into the effects of dams and river engineering on fish stocks, opening a new field of study on the miniaturisation of Yangtze fish resources (the progressive shrinking of fish size and abundance under chronic fishing pressure) and strategies for their recovery. He participated three times in consultations on the drafting of the Yangtze River Protection Law. He graduated from the Department of Biology at Sichuan University in 1955.
Zhang Xianliang 张显良 | MARA Fisheries Bureau chief
Favouring making DWF sustainable via transparency in overseas operations, he is keen to crack down on vessels and firms charged with IUU fishing by levying penalties, reducing subsidies, and banning vessels and captains. At the bilateral level, the fisheries bureau has also engaged with global fishing corporations, extending its Belt and Road initiatives to include sustainable ocean practices and fishery management.
The industry, he argues, faces three bottlenecks: R&D, survey data, and processing technologies. His Bureau is responsible for managing the DWF industry, with duties including negotiations and cooperation with relevant countries, international and regional organisations in DWF fishing, and taking part in DWF-related international affairs.
Previously, the Chinese Academy of Fishery Sciences director, Zhang became director of the Fisheries Bureau in June 2016. In 2018, he led visits to Ghana and Zanzibar with China National Distant Water Fishing Association representatives to discuss IUU fishing and increased fishing cooperation. Zhang makes frequent public statements about strengthening supervision at fishing ports, and works on port construction plans as well as the forthcoming Regulations for Fishing Port Management.
Gui Jianfang 桂建芳 | CAS Institute of Hydrobiology, chair of the midterm evaluation expert group
As chair of the expert group that produced the midterm verdict, Gui reads the five-year results as confirmation that the ban’s logic was sound. But he cautions against reading stock rebounds as ecosystem recovery. Removing fishing pressure, in his view, was the necessary first move; reconnecting lakes to the river, restoring spawning grounds and tackling habitat degradation are the harder tasks that will determine whether the second five years consolidate or squander what the first five years achieved. Endemic species, which make up 43 percent of the Yangtze’s fish, are his benchmark: their recovery, he argues, is the only reliable indicator of whether the river’s ecological function is substantially returning.
A fish geneticist and breeding scientist at CAS (Chinese Academy of Sciences) Institute of Hydrobiology, Gui was born in Hubei in 1956 and graduated from Wuhan University in 1982, and a master’s degree in genetics in 1984. He completed doctoral research at the Institute of Hydrobiology in 1995 and conducted postdoctoral work at Ohio Medical College and UC San Diego from 1991 to 1994. He was elected a CAS Academician in 2013 and a fellow of the World Academy of Sciences in 2015.
context
31 Mar 2026: press conference on advancing the Yangtze ten-year fishing ban
30 Jan 2026: press conference on mid-term evaluation of the ten-year fishing ban 27 Dec 2025 in the Yangtze River and phased achievements over the past five years
27 Dec 2025: Fisheries Law (revised)
23 Dec 2021: protection of Yangtze River aquatic life management regulations
11 Oct 2021: list of banned fishing gear in key waters of Yangtze River Basin
27 Dec 2019: time and scope of fishing ban in key waters of Yangtze River
09 Jan 2017: fishery 5-year plan issued