A panorama of Jiangyin, a county-level city in Wuxi, East China's Jiangsu province. [Photo/wxrb.com]

A city along the Yangtze River has frozen industrial production in 28 percent of its approved port shoreline in order to win the fight against water pollution.

The government of Jiangyin, Jiangsu province, announced the suspension to shorten its approved port shoreline from 23.4 kilometers to 16.85 kilometers in 2016.

Jiangyin has many resident chemical, textiles and shipbuilding companies, some of which are located along the riverside. A number of firms of high economic value were forced to move, including the giant Jiangsu Yangzijiang Shipbuilding Group.

Last year, Jiangyin released a three-year plan to protect the Yangtze, which detailed 20 key projects to create the Yangtze River Ecological Security Demonstration Zone.

By controlling the water pollution at source, dredging lakes, drawing away dirty water and cleaning up the riverbanks, water quality samples from all nine test points in Jiangyin now meet the required standards.

According to the three-year plan, in 2020, all the sewage outlets on rivers will be monitored.

The Yangtze River is the country's longest and is the main water source for many cities along its banks.

Jiangyin has applied the most stringent environmental access system, not without cost. In recent years, there were projects rejected for their environmental protection failures that could have brought in investments topping 10 billion yuan ($1.4 billion) annually, said Jin Danjing, deputy director of the Jiangyin Ecological Environment Bureau.

In return, a slew of environmental-friendly projects have been attracted to Jiangyin because of its forward-looking policies.

The city is now home to 384 high-tech enterprises. The output value of emerging industries now accounts for 43.9 percent of the total industrial output value of businesses above a designated size – companies with annual revenue of 20 million yuan or more -- in Jiangyin.