With the population China has and the relative dryness of its environment, ongoing water problems would seem to be a reality; but one hopes they are successful in addressing them.
The Three Gorges Dam (world’s largest dam) recently completed, was a good project and more like it need to be considered. As much as the sea needs fresh water we would rather see it falling in rain than from run-off from land and people that need it.
An excerpt.
Alarm bells sound as China goes dry
Beijing, Aug 23 (DPA)
China's worst drought in half a century is putting the spotlight on a far larger problem: its water is running out. The 1.3 billion people of the world's most populous country have at their disposal only a quarter of the water per person that is available on average around the world.
Through its surging economic growth, industrial pollution and widespread waste, China long ago saw itself sink into a serious and sustained water crisis.
Professor He Shaoling, a researcher with the China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research, said the water shortage had developed into 'a threat to national security'.
Of China's more than 600 cities, 400 are short of water, the water resources ministry said. In Beijing and about 100 other cities, there are 'extreme shortages,' and in the Olympic year 2008, the Chinese capital and host city is to find itself short of up to 1.1 billion cubic metres of water, the ministry predicted.
Despite the danger, automatic sprinkler systems are installed there to water lawns and flowers every day at its quickly rising industrial and residential complexes.
But the water problem could threaten the very economic miracle that made those complexes possible. Today China requires 10 times more water as Japan and six times more than South Korea for its economy to produce one unit of gross domestic product, said Zhai Haohui, vice minister for water resources.
He warned that the problem threatens China's food security as well. A persistent drought has left 18 million Chinese in 15 provinces thirsty and is causing crops to whither in the fields.
The fall harvest was certain to be poor and was expected to lead to food shortages in some areas.
'While a decade of near double-digit economic growth has increased people's income and living standards, it simultaneously has put a serious strain on natural resources and, in some cases, pushed them to breaking point,' He said. 'The most notable of these is fresh water.'
In addition to the shortages, water is also unevenly distributed in China. The northern plains, with more than 45 percent of the country's population and 58 percent of its agricultural land, have a mere 19 percent of the country's fresh water reserves.
The Yellow river, a prime water gauge for northern China, regularly dries up. Hundreds of thousands of wells have gone dry, and the groundwater table under the North China Plain, where half of China's wheat is grown, is 90 metres below the surface and falling by three to six metres per year as farmers pump water out of it to irrigate their wilting crops, He said.
According to the government, more than 300 million Chinese in rural areas lack clean drinking water. The water resources ministry estimated that pollution has left about 40 percent of the water in the nation's 1,300 rivers fit only for agricultural or industrial production.
Although the wealthy southern coastal cities have better water resources, they have also found that they cannot escape the crisis, He said.
'Chemical spills, rampant pollution and poor stewardship of the land have tainted much of the area's water supply.'
Ma Jun, the author of a book on China's water crisis, said government officials must change their thinking.
'Local officials should be judged not just by how fast their local economies grow but also by how well they protect the environment,' he said in an appeal published across China.
Ma said a $62.5 billion project by the central government to divert water from the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River to the north would not solve the water crisis. He said priority needs to be given to conservation and more efficient use of water.
