An aerial drone photo taken on March 21, 2024 shows a view of the Danjiangkou Reservoir in central China's Hubei Province. (Xinhua/Xiao Yijiu)

More than 185 million people in China have directly benefited from a massive water diversion project that has been pumping water from the water-rich south to the drought-prone north over the past decade.

The South-to-North Water Diversion Project, the largest of its kind in the world, has diverted more than 76.7 billion cubic meters of water to the country's northern regions through its middle and eastern routes over the past 10 years, according to a press conference Thursday.

The project has improved the landscape of China's water resource distribution and generated increasing economic, social and ecological benefits, Vice Minister of Water Resources Wang Daoxi said at the press conference.

It has supported GDP growth of over 16 trillion yuan (about 2.23 trillion U.S. dollars) in China's northern regions, based on the premise that every 10,000 yuan of GDP in 2023 required a water input of 46.9 cubic meters, according to the ministry.

The project's conceptual gestation began in the 1950s and the first phases of its middle and eastern routes were put into operation in late 2014. It transports water over long distances from the country's water-resource-rich south to its northern regions, where hundreds of millions of people once faced "absolute water scarcity" according to United Nations standards.

Its annual water transfer volume has risen from over 2 billion cubic meters to 10 billion cubic meters, benefiting 45 large and medium-scale cities along its routes, Wang said.

In terms of the ecological environment, the project has supplied a cumulative total of over 11.8 billion cubic meters of water for ecological water replenishment purposes, effectively curbing the decline in groundwater levels in the north.

Designed to have three routes, the project stretches across four of China's main river basins: the Yangtze, Huaihe, Yellow and Haihe river basins.

Its middle route -- the most prominent of the three as it feeds water to Beijing, the nation's capital -- begins at the Danjiangkou Reservoir in central China's Hubei Province.

The majority of Beijing's drinking water travels over 1,000 kilometers along the middle route from Danjiangkou. Water flows north via canal and pipeline, crosses beneath the Yellow River, and finally arrives in the city's water treatment plants. Today, nearly 80 percent of water consumed in the city's urban areas has made this 15-day journey from Danjiangkou.

The project's eastern route transfers water from east China's Jiangsu Province to regions such as Tianjin Municipality and Shandong Province. Its western route is in its planning stage and has yet to be built.