China will ratchet up supervision of riverbank construction projects during the 11th Five-Year Plan period (2006-2010), vice minister of water resources Jiao Yong said here on Tuesday.

The Ministry of Water Resources will boost law enforcement to prevent illegal construction projects along the country's rivers, Jiao Yong said at a national conference on river course management.

Any unlawful projects discovered will be immediately stopped and the people responsible severely punished, Jiao said.

A survey by the ministry of 5,155 construction projects begun in river zones in the 2002-2005 period found that as many as 770 of them were illegal.

Jiao said that 691 of the illegal projects had been demolished or redesigned by the end of 2005.

(Xinhua News Agency October 25, 2006)