(Bleeker), is a freshwater fish that is endemic to China, and the only representative of the Catostomidae in Asia. Historically, were primarily distributed in the Yangtze and Minjiang (Fujian Province) rivers. Currently, the only remaining wild population is in the Yangtze River, primarily in the middle and upper reaches. The species was listed as a class state protected species by the Chinese government in 1988 and as a vulnerable species (VU) by the International Union for Conservation of Nature in 1998. Currently, hatchery-reared juvenile are released into natural river systems to supplement the wild population in the Yangtze River. However, the effectiveness of these enhancement efforts has not be evaluated to date. To address this, we collected 149 breeding parents and 65 recaptured individuals, and evaluated the parentage relationship using 11 polymorphic microsatellite loci. A total of 140 alleles were obtained and the mean observed and expected heterozygosity was 0.771 and 0.759, respectively. The range of the non-exclusion probability was 0.356–0.890 and the combined non-exclusion probability (first parent) of 11 loci was 99.998 3%. Eleven of the 65 recaptured individuals were offspring of the breeding parents (4 from 26 samples in 2011, 3 from 16 samples in 2012, 4 from 23 samples in 2013). Our results suggest that the total contribution of the enhancement to the wild population of was 16.92% in the middle and upper reaches of Yangtze River.