“Outline of the Plan for Ecological Protection and High-quality Development of the Yellow River Basin” (hereinafter referred to as the Outline) was established by the State Council and the CPC Central Committee. In the paper wrote that it’s necessary to protect and inherit the Yellow River culture and to build a Yellow River culture and tourism belt with international influence.

    According to the Outline, the government needed to push forward the integrated development of culture and tourism and make the culture and tourism industries pillar industries. As a result, the government should do the followings. It needed to enhance the coordination and cooperation of resources between different regions and improve all-for-one tourism to establish a group of signature destinations to show the Yellow River culture. The upper stream of the river had advantages, including diverse scenic beauty, primitive ecology, colorful ethnic culture and distinctive regional features, so local governments should enhance supporting facilities, increase the service supply for high-quality tourism and support places near Qinghai, Sichuan and Gansu to set up national ecological tourism demonstration areas. The middle stream boasted cultural resource like ancient capitals, cities and relics, so the regional cultural features and agricultural cultural features must be highlighted to create a world-level destination for history, culture and tourism. The world-renowned cultural relics in the lower stream must be made full use of to promote outstanding traditional Chinese culture. The local governments needed to improve the protection of grotto culture to create a cultural brand of “Chinese grottoes” and a signature for China’s characteristic history and culture. A red tourism corridor could be built relying on the old revolutionary base of Shanxi, Gansu and Ningxia, the long march route, the route for the army to march to the west, the Lvliang mountain revolutionary base area, Nanliang revolutionary base area, Yimeng old revolutionary base and so on. There also needed to be events to promote the art and movie production in the Yellow River basin, so as to create a batch of outstanding work full of the features of this era.

    The Outline also included the content to systematically protect the cultural relics of the Yellow River. Relating governments were required to do the following. They needed to conduct a research and recognition of Yellow River cultural resource in all aspects and had a clear idea of the condition of ancient cultural relics, intangible cultural heritage, ancient documents and other kinds of significant cultural relics. They needed to implement a systematic protection project for Yellow River cultural relics and build a Yellow River cultural heritage corridor. They needed to conduct rescuing conservation for cultural relics which were in great danger. They needed to take strict measures for the protection and restoration of the ancient Great Wall and for the improvement of key sections of the Great Wall. They needed to support cities including but not limited to Xi'an, Luoyang, Kaifeng and Datong to protect and preserve it's historical appearance. They needed to carry out a key research project named "archeology in China" in the Yellow River basin. They needed to improve the level of protection for revolutionary cultural heritage and relics in the Yellow river region. They needed to perfect the system of the record for intangible cultural heritage in the Yellow River basin. Responsible governments needed to inherit the cultural gene of the Yellow River culture; implement the source-finding project of the Chinese civilization; clarify the cultural development history of the Yellow River culture and present the diversity and the multiple regions of the Yellow River culture. It should start a project to inherit and innovate the Yellow River culture to show the spirit of the river in a systematic way; build a Yellow River cultural system to connect the history and the present as well as the traditional and the current practice; create an important landmark of the Chinese civilization; explore the design and construction of the Yellow River national culture park; support the application of the Yellow River cultural heritage to be a world cultural heritage; spend considerable effort to promote Yanan spirit, Jiao Yulu spirit, Yimeng spirit and so on; build and renovate a new batch of Yellow River culture museums to show the history and culture of the basin and to tell the story of the river in a new era; initiate the promotion of the national image of the "China's Yellow River"; integrate the cultural elements of the river in the national culture year and China tourism year as well as others to create a symbol for foreign communication; support various kinds of people-to-people cooperation between Yellow River region and countries along the Belt and Road initiative to promote connection between people and cultural recognition; improve the communication and cooperation between basins of other rivers, including the Nile, the Danube, the Rhine, the Volga and so on to encourage cultural communication and mutual learning and to launch ancestor-tracing, worshiping ancestors and other forms of origin-finding, so as to create a cultural brand of the originating place of the people living in the Yellow River basin.

    The Outline made it clear that more effort should be spent to protect rivers and lakes and the tourism scale should be decided in a scientific way. Local governments were required to handle the relationship between the ecological environment as well as the production and consumption and reduce people’s influence and destruction to the ecological system, including over grazing, over tourism and excessive exploitation of resources; develop rural leisure tourism and establish a mutual-support system for rural development and the protection of cultural ecological resource; support veterans and worker getting back to or enter rural areas to find a job or to start a new business in ecological protection and rural tourism and enhance transportation in the Yellow River basin and push forward the tourism navigation and navigation for different sections.

    The area affected by the Outline amounted to 1.3 million square kilometers, composed of county-level administration areas of 9 provinces and regions, namely, Qinghai, Sichuan, Gansu, Ningxia, Inner Mongolia, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Henan and Shandong where the trunk river or it’s branches ran through. The principle was “ecology first, green development, making plan according to the river condition, saving water, adjusting measures according to local condition, stipulating different policies according to various situations, overall planing and promoting in a coordinated way”. The goal was to make the Yellow River basin an important example in the treatment of large river, a significant protector of the national ecological security, a vital experiment zone for high-level development and a major zone to protect, inherit and promote Chinese cultural.