A breakdown of the Yangtze River Protection Law, the 313 chemicals it bans or restricts, and what it actually means for your bookings.

Why This Law Exists

The Yangtze River is the water source for hundreds of millions of people, and it also runs past some of China’s biggest ports and chemical plants. Years of heavy industry along the river put real pressure on it. In response, China passed the Yangtze River Protection Law — its first environmental law written for one specific region. It was adopted on 26 December 2020 and came into force on 1 March 2021.

Most of the law deals with pollution control generally. Two articles matter if you move dangerous goods: Article 51, which contains the actual ban, and Article 90, which sets the penalties.

The Two Rules That Matter

Article 51: the ban itself

Article 51 has two parts, and it’s easy to mix them up. The first part is about insurance — it requires financial guarantees for vessels carrying dangerous goods. The second part is the actual prohibition: it bans water transport of highly toxic chemicals, and any other dangerous chemicals the state has separately banned from inland river transport, anywhere in the Yangtze Basin. When people cite “Article 51” as the source of the ban, they really mean Article 51, paragraph 2.

Article 90: what happens if you don’t comply

Article 90 gives the penalties real weight:

Authorities can also confiscate any illegal gains from the shipment. This isn’t a theoretical risk — Shanghai MSA has published real enforcement cases.

The Two Lists That Decide What’s Banned

Article 51 doesn’t name any chemicals itself. It points to two separate government lists, and this is where the real compliance work happens.

1. The Catalogue of Hazardous Chemicals (2015)

This is China’s general hazardous chemicals list, not something written specifically for the river. Any substance flagged “highly toxic” in this catalogue — 149 substances carry that flag — automatically falls under the river ban.

2. The Catalogue of Prohibited Dangerous Chemicals by Inland River (2019)

This is the list built specifically for river transport, and it’s the one with real teeth. It splits chemicals into two categories:

For a pure substance, the only thing that matters is its CAS number. Shanghai MSA has said this explicitly: the CAS number is the deciding factor, not what the chemical is called on your paperwork. That’s exactly why the full table further down leads with CAS numbers.

Where the Ban Applies

Geographically, this covers the whole Yangtze River Basin — the main river, its tributaries, and connected lakes. Most of the visible enforcement happens around Shanghai, where the Shanghai Maritime Safety Administration issued its implementing notice on 18 February 2021, covering the Waigaoqiao terminal and the areas under Wusong, Baoshan, Chongming, and Pudong MSA jurisdiction. Further upriver, ports including Taicang, Changshu, Nantong, Jiangyin, Zhangjiagang, Jingjiang, Taizhou, Yangzhou, Zhenjiang, Nanjing, Ma’anshan, Wuhan, and Yibin sit under the same rule.

The ban covers every stage of a shipment: loading, discharge, transshipment between an ocean vessel and a river barge, and even cargo that simply stays on board while the ship passes through. There’s no “just passing through” exception.

When a Chemical Isn’t Pure: The Mixture Rule

A single substance is easy — check its CAS number against the two lists above. A blended product is harder, and this became a real problem for legitimate cargo getting rejected by mistake. Shanghai MSA fixed this with a clarification notice on 8 February 2022, specifically for the Waigaoqiao area, though in practice it’s now treated as the working standard everywhere.

Under this notice, a mixture is treated as banned if it contains a banned ingredient, or if it carries any of these three hazard classifications under the Globally Harmonized System (GHS):

• Acute Toxicity — Category 1 (health hazard)
• Acute Aquatic Toxicity — Category 1
• Chronic Aquatic Toxicity — Category 1

Any one of those three, at Category 1, is enough to bar the mixture from the water area.

The White List: A Way Through for Safe Cargo

To stop legitimate, non-hazardous products from being rejected by mistake, Shanghai MSA runs a “White List.” A manufacturer or shipper submits their Safety Data Sheet, CAS data, and formulation details; MSA reviewers check whether the product genuinely falls outside the banned criteria; approved products go on a public list that carriers and terminals can rely on without re-checking the classification every time. More than 30 chemical companies have used this process, with approvals on record for shippers including BASF China, Yangzi Petrochemical-BASF, Afton Chemical, and Lubrizol.

What This Means for You

• Get complete CAS/UN/SDS data before you confirm a booking. Incomplete component disclosure pushes a mixture straight into “must prove it isn’t Category 1.”
• Check both catalogues, not just the one your customer assumes applies.
• Route genuinely banned cargo through coastal ports outside the basin — Ningbo-Zhoushan, Qingdao, Shenzhen — and move it inland by truck or rail instead.
• Ask for a Letter of Indemnity confirming Yangtze River Protection Law compliance. Enforcement doesn’t stop at the carrier — a shipper or beneficial cargo owner who mis-declares cargo can be pursued directly, and in consolidated LCL shipments that exposure can reach the forwarder too.
• Be extra careful with new or unfamiliar shippers, and get a proper chemical review whenever the composition isn’t fully clear.

The Complete List: 313 Banned and Restricted Chemicals

This is the full 2019 catalogue, both categories, taken directly from the official Chinese government release — not a summary. Search by CAS number, chemical name, or UN number. Where an English name is shown, it has been independently verified; where it says not verified, cross-check the CAS number yourself on PubChem before relying on it — the CAS number itself is accurate as published, but not every one of the 313 systematic Chinese names has a confirmed English equivalent yet.

The Bottom Line

The Yangtze River Protection Law isn’t paperwork — it’s a basin-wide ban backed by real fines and real vessel detentions. If your cargo touches the Yangtze, the question isn’t “is this dangerous goods.” It’s “does this exact CAS number, or this mixture’s GHS classification, put me on the banned list — and can I prove otherwise before I book the vessel.”