Focus will be placed on the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River and include Hubei, Jiangxi, Anhui and Jiangsu provinces and the Shanghai Municipality.

The river is not only vital to the country's water control, irrigation and hydro-electric power generation, but is also one of China's major transport arteries.

The ban has been issued to guard against the increasing number of illegal diggers who have returned to the above-mentioned areas in pursuit of sand-selling profits, according to Zeng Shaoquan, director of the Department of Mineral Resources Exploration Management under the Ministry of Land and Resources.

High-quality sand from the Yangtze River became popular in the early 1980's when the development of China's economy picked up speed and construction increased across the country.

Since taking the sand requires very little technology, it was quickly seen an easy way to make money in the eyes of people living along the riverside.

Although it is necessary to dig away some of the sand in the Yangtze River, which quickly becomes silted up, excessive and improper digging has endangered dikes and dams and interrupted the flow of transport on the river.

Last year saw an river block that took eight hours to free up in Central China's Anhui Province, caused by illegal sand digging.

According to Zeng, a legal sand digger on the Yangtze River should have licences from corresponding water resource, transportation and resource management administrations.

And only when the digger has got approval from the former two departments can the resource authority consider issuing the third and final necessary document.

The ministry has asked local governments to tighten management over sand digging on the Yangtze River. The officials who ignore their duties will be submitted to legal or administrative disciplinary punishment for deliberately obstructing the implementation of the ban.

Zeng's department is busy collecting data on transport volumes, sand reserves and the situation of dikes and dams on various sections of the Yangtze River in order to put together a detailed sand exploration program.

The ministry has said that they will not be issuing any further digging licences on the Yangtze until the study has been completed

(China Daily 02/05/01)