China made almost 410.6 billion yuan ($57.5 billion) of investment into building water resources management projects in the first five months this year, up by 32.1 percent from the same period last year, according to the Ministry of Water Resources.

These projects employed over 1.2 million workers, including 895,000 people from rural China, it said.

The period saw the construction of a total of 14,680 new water resources management projects, 2,785 more than the same period last year, it added. Of them, 17 are major projects of national level and their combined planned investment reached 97.1 billion yuan.

The ministry said water resources authorities across the country managed to collect 654.7 billion yuan of funds for water resources management development from January to May, up by 48.6 billion yuan from the same period in 2022.