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How China’s Water Challenges Could Lead to a Global Food and Supply Chain Crisis

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Gabriel Collins and Gopal Reddy, "How China’s Water Challenges Could Lead to a Global Food and Supply Chain Crisis" (Houston: Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, November 14, 2022), https://doi.org/10.25613/526F-MR68 .

Note: This report is based on Gabriel Collins and Gopal Reddy’s “China’s Growing Water Crisis,” published in Foreign Affairs on August 23, 2022.

Following a record-breaking drought this summer, China is on the brink of a water catastrophe that could have devastating consequences for global food security, energy markets and supply chains. The 2022 drought, which mainly impacted China’s Sichuan province, offered an uncomfortable preview of what the future could bring if water supplies continue to run dry: Low reservoir levels slashed hydroelectricity output, which in turn forced power rationing to major industrial consumers such as metals and battery producers and electronics assemblers. [1] A prolonged multi-year drought would have exponentially larger impacts across global grain, energy and industrial materials markets due to water-driven and electricity-caused supply chain disruptions within China. Billions of people worldwide would be affected in ways worse and potentially longer-lasting than the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing war in Ukraine.

This essay aims to bring the criticality of China’s water challenge onto policymaker radar screens around the world. Policy discussions of China-driven risks so far have mostly centered on the nation’s slowing growth, real estate bubbles, high debt and potential military conflict over Taiwan. These factors are significant, but China’s incipient water crisis, which receives far less attention from policymakers, could plausibly overwhelm such issues. An unsettling question emerges: What happens if China suffers a multi-year water crisis that significantly reduces its grain production and electricity supplies?

China Is Already Seriously Water-Stressed

Aside from its use for basic human needs, water is an often-unseen input (for example, it takes roughly 500 gallons of water to produce a single hamburger [2] ), and its ubiquity and underpricing often cause consumers and policymakers to overlook its importance. The scale of human water consumption is massive compared to all other commodities. For reference, China’s economy consumes 14 million barrels per day of crude oil, while its daily average water consumption is 10 billion barrels, a quantity 700 times larger. Unlike many energy commodities, water also does not have viable substitutes. It is especially critical for growing food and generating energy, two of humanity’s most life-critical activities.

Beijing has the dubious distinction of being the capital of the world’s second-largest economy, while having per capita water supplies that have fallen to a level on par with those of cities near Chile’s Atacama Desert — the driest place on Earth. [3] Under UNICEF’s standards, [4] Beijing’s per capita water availability of approximately 120 cubic meters would qualify as “extreme water scarcity.” Water availability in Beijing was nearly 10 times higher when the People’s Republic was founded in 1949; Beijing’s water challenges reflect China’s plight more broadly.

Four decades of explosive economic growth, combined with food security policies that emphasize self-sufficiency, have pushed northern China’s water system beyond sustainability and threaten to do so in parts of southern China as well. As of 2013, average water resource availability in northern China (the 12 provinces north of the Yangtze River) was 300 cubic meters (m3), or 40% below the UN definition of acute water scarcity. Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hong Kong and many other major cities suffer from freshwater levels well below the UN’s definition of acute scarcity. For reference, Egypt had per capita water resources of 570 m3 as of 2019 and does not have a large manufacturing base to support.

Independent data on water availability in China are sparse, but another decade of rapid economic growth and shifting precipitation patterns have likely further stressed water supplies throughout the country. Official water data from the PRC government should also be assumed to understate the magnitude and urgency of water problems. For decades, Beijing has generally chosen to conceal the full extent of its environmental problems and has especially strong incentives to do so for something as systemically important as water supply.

Empirical data show the strain. NASA GRACE satellites that measure gravitational anomalies now suggest that northern China has some of the world’s most overdrawn aquifers. Monthly data from the same satellite initiative further show that the most populous portion of China north of the Yangtze River — a band from western Sichuan to southern Jilin — has seen steady declines in water storage for much of the past 15 years.

Figure 1 — The North China Plain (NCP) — China’s Breadbasket — Often Exceeds Water Stress of the American Ogallala Aquifer Region, Itself in Serious Crisis Change in Water Equivalent Thickness, Centimeters. 0=Neutral

Figure 2 — Approximate Geographical Extent of “North China” and North China Plain Zones GRACE Data Come From

Groundwater levels are falling by a meter or more annually in parts of northern China, causing subsidence and locking in intensified water stress as underground pore spaces collapse and compromise the aquifer’s potential for future recharge. Large-scale depletion of groundwater resources across China — potentially to the tune of 60 billion cubic meters annually, according to one team of local and foreign scholars [5] — continues, despite attempts to shift water resources to high-stress areas like the North China Plain.

Moreover, official data — which again likely understate the true extent of the problem — indicate that close to a fifth of China’s water resources are polluted to the point of being unusable. A 2018 analysis of surface water by China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment [6] found that although the quality had improved from previous years, 19% was still classified as unfit for human consumption, and roughly 7% was unfit for any use at all. The quality of groundwater — which is critical for ensuring water supplies during drought — was worse, with approximately 30% deemed unfit for human consumption and 16% deemed unfit for any use. China may be able to use impaired water resources in the future, but only with major additional investment in treatment infrastructure and a significant increase in electricity use to power water treatment processes.

Groundwater pollution is also likely to worsen as farm (and other) chemicals continue to percolate downward into shallow, and eventually, deep aquifers, a decades-long process. Data from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization show just how chemical-intensive China’s farming model is, currently using nearly 2.5 times more fertilizer and four times as many pesticides as the United States, despite having 30% less arable land. [7]

China’s Water Geography Problem

Much of China’s water problem arises from the spatial distribution of its water resources and that its meteorology poorly matches the locations of agricultural activity and population. Many areas south of the Yangtze River receive annual precipitation substantially greater than Munich or New York City. Meanwhile, in a good year, much of the California-sized North China Plain gets only about as much rain as Sacramento or San Francisco — yet it serves as China’s breadbasket and is one of the most densely-populated regions on Earth. Mao Zedong acknowledged these realities 70 years ago when the pressure was palpable but less acute than today, noting, “The South has plenty of water and the North lacks it, so, if possible, why not borrow some?” [8]

China’s government has taken drastic steps along such lines to try to increase local water supplies where possible. This includes the $60 billion South-to-North Water Diversion Project, widescale atmospheric interventions to boost rainfall and the relocation of heavy industry away from water-stressed regions. Current plans call for a further $500 billion of investment in water infrastructure. [9]

Despite its efforts to increase water availability, China still faces a water supply gap that some domestic scholars estimate could reach 25% by 2030. [10] There are many unknown variables in this equation. These include hydrological factors like accelerated groundwater depletion, possible changes to precipitation due to climate change and the potential for glacially-fed rivers to see a sudden drop in flows. Water transfer schemes also offer a potential solution. Yet erratic precipitation and frequent droughts in southern China suggest that simply shifting water from south to north will not be a viable long-term solution. Southern cities that have historically received abundant rainfall — like Guangzhou and Hong Kong — have, in recent years, faced water-use restrictions amid serious drought conditions. [11]

Other countries have proven it is possible to manage demand and incentivize efficiency by raising the cost of water. But this will be a tough sell in China given that the global competitiveness of so much of its industrial model is predicated upon purposely depressed input costs, including both energy (coal) and water.

It is likely that Beijing has harvested the lowest-hanging fruit in terms of increasing water efficiency. For instance, World Bank data show that the share of water used by agriculture in China declined from 88% in 1982 to 63% in 2007 — a proportion that has since remained stable. [12] The plateau suggests that further water efficiency gains in the farming sector would require more dramatic measures, such as significant increases in water prices. Typically, such frontier breakthrough events come only when crisis forces policymakers to act, meaning that disruptive shockwaves would already, by definition, have been injected into key local and global markets. Such a water crisis in China and its aftershocks could reverberate through global markets for years, with food markets among the most directly and intensely impacted.

China’s High-Stakes Food-Energy-Water Nexus

At the heart of China’s (and all other) modern economic systems is the food-energy-water nexus — the three-legged stool of tradeoffs upon which civilization rests. A given molecule of water can nourish a wheat or rice stalk, turn a hydroelectric turbine, cool a thermal power plant’s condenser, or slake a human being’s thirst. But it cannot do more than one of these simultaneously, meaning that one leg of the nexus generally competes with the others.

As a global rule of thumb, producing two tonnes of wheat requires enough water [13] to fill an Olympic-size swimming pool. [14] Electricity generation, especially that from coal, also requires massive volumes of water. The annual electricity use of a single urban Chinese household — about 2 megawatt-hours — could require anywhere from 1,200 to as much as 120,000 gallons of water, depending on power plant cooling methodology. Agriculture accounts for approximately 65% of China’s water consumption with power generation and manufacturing consuming another 22%; household consumption accounts for most of the remainder. [15] Growth reinforces growth, and rapid economic expansion over the past three decades has had a commensurate impact on water consumption.

China’s leadership is keenly aware that famines precipitated by drought helped topple at least five of China’s 17 dynasties. [16] Chinese leaderships have thus for centuries emphasized maximizing domestic grain production to ensure food security. The policy has become especially important for the last two generations of Communist Party leaders as strategic competition between China and the United States intensifies. For the past 20 years, Chinese farmers have been able to maintain “self-sufficiency” levels (defined as total consumption divided by domestic production) of 80% or higher for corn, rice and wheat — three of the four staple grains.

Intensive water usage played an outsized role in this achievement. Data from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) show that between 1985 and 2019, China’s stock of farmable land actually shrank slightly, while the portion of those lands equipped for irrigation rose from 41% to 63%. [17] Better technology and farming practices, combined with increasingly intensive use of key inputs — namely, fertilizers and pesticides — drove some of the gains, but their contributions were heavily contingent on increased local availability of irrigation water. Other grain superpowers such as Brazil, Canada, Russia and the U.S. are far less dependent on irrigation (with 17% of farmable land equipped for irrigation in the U.S., 15% in Canada, and far less in Brazil and Russia). [18] These nations expanded production by both boosting the cultivable land base and better applying inputs. By contrast, China’s calculus made the water variable disproportionally important — evidenced by the fact that much of the growth in land equipped for irrigation took place in the last 20 years. Indeed, China’s overall freshwater withdrawals rose by 28% between 1982 and 2017, according to the FAO. Groundwater use in particular has increased rapidly, growing by 66% during that time.

In northern China, the likely ground zero for the first impacts of a water crisis, significant use of groundwater commenced in the 1950s. Users have since drilled more than 7.5 million wells that now support crops on an area nearly the size of Oklahoma. [19] The benefits to crop production have been spectacular; farms on the North China Plain produce approximately 60% of China’s wheat, 45% of its corn, 35% of its cotton and 64% of its peanuts. In contemporary tonnage terms, this means annual wheat production of more than 80 million tonnes (more than all of Russia’s annual production) and corn output of nearly 125 million tonnes (three times Ukraine’s annual production).

The millions of wells now draining the North China Plain Aquifer and other subsurface water-bearing strata are proving unsustainable. Across the North China Plain, the water table now declines approximately a meter per year as farms and cities compete to pump water far faster than nature can replenish it. [20] Data from NASA satellites that measure anomalies in Earth’s gravity field suggest that between 2003 and 2010, North China lost an amount of groundwater equal to about 143 million barrels per day each year — 10 times China’s present daily oil demand.

Once groundwater resources are sufficiently overdrawn, water can become economically inaccessible to agricultural users if the cost of obtaining it through larger, deeper wells exceeds the market value of crops produced. [21] The transition to economic inaccessibility can happen far before reservoirs are physically “pumped out.” In practice, this means the transition from “stressed but sufficient” water supplies to an acute lack of supply can happen very quickly, particularly for the critical agricultural sector.

A Sustained China Water Crisis Would Spark a Global Food Crisis

If the North China Plain suffered a 33% crop loss due to drought, China would potentially need to import approximately 20% of “tradable” corn production worldwide and more than 13% of global tradable wheat. [22] If losing a third of a crop seems like a pessimistic scenario, consider that in spring 2022, drought slashed Argentina’s expected corn crop by precisely that proportion. [23] A drought that curtailed rice yields in southern China would create even larger market shocks due to China’s high share of global rice consumption. All three major staple grains are critical for a mass of lower-income consumers worldwide that collectively number in the billions, with corn as a staple in Latin America, wheat vital in the Middle East and North Africa, and rice essential across Asia.

China has compensated for this potential weakness by building far and away the largest grain stockpile in the world. [24] For the staple “starch” grains — corn, rice and wheat — China has consistently stored close to a year of supplies in recent years. It has also held significantly higher soybean stocks, albeit with fewer months of forward demand coverage than are held for the three grains directly consumed by humans. Yet any event that lasted for more than a single growing season would substantially increase the probability of Chinese entities taking aggressive action to secure additional supplies — which would likely trigger price spikes that inflate food costs in the OECD world and potentially render key food items economically inaccessible to hundreds of millions of people in non-OECD countries.

A China Water Crisis Would Also Likely Spawn an Electricity Crisis

Despite significant investment in renewable energy, China still generates approximately 60% of its electricity from coal and nearly 20% from hydroelectric sources. Coal-fired power plants require substantial amounts of water for cooling, while coal mining requires substantial amounts of water for dust suppression and much larger volumes beyond that to wash coal and prepare it for sale. The electricity-water connection is more obvious for hydropower, where the force of descending water turns turbogenerators that produce electricity.

Quantifying plausible drought impacts on China’s electricity system helps illustrate the issue’s global importance. While China has suffered recent droughts that caused localized hydropower curtailments, the country’s electricity system has become accustomed over the past two decades to hydropower supplies that either rise year-on-year or else do not decline by more than 3.5% in a given calendar year. The PRC has never faced the stress test of losing 10% of its expected national hydro output over the course of a year, much less for a longer period of time.

Brazil offers a useful case study in both the magnitude of climate-driven hydro disruptions in a continent-sized country (Brazil’s physical area is 90% the size of China’s), as well as the downstream economic and social impacts. In 2001, Brazil suffered blackouts when hydro output declined nearly 15% from the previous year amid a multi-region drought. [25] The country’s power system again experienced severe strain between 2012 and 2015, when hydro output fell for four consecutive years due to drought. Then, 2021 saw renewed energy shortages as drought reduced national hydropower production by nearly 10% relative to 2020 levels. [26] Other energy sources were impacted as a result, particularly natural gas, with PetroBras (Brazil’s state champion oil and gas firm) forced to triple its imports of liquefied natural gas to compensate for the loss of hydro energy. [27]

It is worth noting that on average, much of Brazil is as wet — and sometimes far wetter — than the areas of southwest China where much of the PRC’s hydropower facilities are located. This suggests that the actual losses experienced by Brazilian hydro generators could plausibly occur if south/central China suffered a prolonged drought. Accordingly, it is defensible to assume a 15% annual loss of hydro capacity as the benchmark crisis level, which under current circumstances would mean losing nearly 200 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity output — roughly what Egypt generates in a year. Worse hydro scenarios could see the loss of 330 TWh — approximately the annual power production of Iran or Mexico.

Wind and solar farms cannot be surged to offset hydro losses, and China’s nuclear plants already run at high utilization levels. That leaves fossil-fueled thermal power, with only coal having the spare capacity and scale to potentially boost output by hundreds of terawatt-hours on short notice. Assuming engineering, logistical and operational challenges could be overcome, China’s coal use could increase by as much as 100 to 170 million tonnes per year, depending on the severity of hydropower shortfalls. The amount would be less if some sectors’ power demand was reduced by government order.

But those numbers assume coal plants can run unimpeded, which may not be accurate. Coal power itself is highly vulnerable to water risk, and depending on how geographically widespread a Chinese drought of record is, hydro and coal generation assets might be affected at the same time. Brazil’s 2001 drought affected multiple regions at once for an extended period. Similarly, the southwestern U.S. has suffered a decades-long drought that has brought Lake Mead to historically low levels and significantly reduced hydropower production by the Hoover Dam.

Significant Portion of China’s Coal Fleet at Risk

To assess the impacts of potential losses of coal power due to drought, the authors leveraged data from Global Energy Monitor’s Coal Plant Tracker [28] to build a database of approximately 2,000 utility-scale (300 megawatts or larger capacity) coal-fired power generation units located in China, including their known or likely mode of cooling. [29] Based on that information, we separated out coal units that were likely to be functionally “drought resistant,” in this case meaning power plants cooled by seawater or direct/indirect air cooling. These accounted for 158 gigawatts (GW) and 295 GW, respectively, out of a national total of approximately 963 GW. For reference, the next biggest coal power countries, India and the United States, each operate about 210 GW of capacity.

Geographically subdividing the remaining approximately 500 GW of potentially drought-exposed, utility-scale coal plant capacity suggests an “at-risk” capacity of 185 GW in the North China Plain region and a bit less than 175 GW in south-central China (east of Tibet and near and south of the Yangtze River). The nature of the risk and the timeframe in which it potentially manifests vary. Once-through power plants that take water from a river or lake, loop it through the plant, and discharge it a few degrees warmer back into the source waterbody are most vulnerable to lower water levels.

Plants that recirculate cooling water within a closed loop are less immediately exposed but must, over time, replace consumptive water losses caused by evaporation from their cooling towers. Unfortunately, the bulk of China’s coal plants are in regions considered water-stressed or highly water-stressed. [30] In addition, much of China’s coal capacity overlaps with key agricultural regions, which may force officials to make difficult decisions regarding water allocation to energy versus crop irrigation.

Figure 3 — China Utility-Scale Coal Plants By Cooling Type (Estimated using Google satellite imagery)

Prolonged drought also lowers water levels in rivers, which, in many parts of central and southern China, serve as key transport arteries for moving coal to power plants. Indeed, in provinces such as Hubei and Hunan, many power plants depend on river barges to deliver the coal they burn. Long-duration drought would reduce the safe water depth available for river traffic and shrink the load that barges can carry; a worst-case scenario would see some channels closed entirely.

Multiplied over a region with numerous coal plants and thousands of waterway kilometers, water level shifts could rapidly strain coal supplies to power plants. If plants along some of these waterways had to surge their electricity output to compensate for hydro output losses elsewhere, logistical pinch points would be significantly magnified. Recent water level challenges for the United States’ Mississippi River system are a case in point, with its barge traffic highly sensitive to even slight changes in water levels; similar physics likely apply in many waterways in China as well.

Taking all of these factors together, it is reasonable to assume that Chinese coal plants in affected areas could be forced to de-rate output by 5% to 10% during a prolonged drought. A drought emergency could thus potentially reduce thermal power supplies by about 80 TWh per year in the North China Plain region and by nearly that amount again in south-central China. If both regions were affected simultaneously, the aggregate thermal power production loss could nearly equal the loss of hydropower. Seasonality would likely exacerbate the impact, since China’s hydro generation typically peaks in late summer, and July and August are consistently two of the country’s highest electricity-use times.

A China Electricity Crisis Would Create a Global Supply Chain Crisis

Power supply problems in China extend far beyond flickering lights and sputtering air conditioners in Wuhan or Beijing. Industrial facilities, many of them very power-intensive, account for over 65% of electricity use in China. [31] This means that to minimize the immediate human impact of broad, uncontrolled blackouts, Party officials would force China’s industrial sector to curtail operations to ease the grid load — as they did during power shortfalls in 2021 and 2022.

Blackouts by decree disrupt key material supplies, raise prices and turbocharge inflationary pressures. China is, by a significant margin, the world’s largest producer of aluminum, ferro-silicon, lead, magnesium, manganese, zinc, and most rare earths and many other specialty metals and materials. Power outages in even a single key province could impact global markets — as European carmakers discovered in late 2021 when power shortages led local officials to curtail magnesium smelter operations in Shaanxi Province, home to about 50% of global output. [32] As inventories plummeted, prices spiked to seven times their level [33] at the beginning of the year, and European industrial consumers called for government action to ensure supplies.

Electricity problems in China would also destabilize energy transition efforts globally. In a cruel irony, many of the same energy technologies the world seeks to manage climate change and shift to less water-intensive electricity production come from coal and power-intensive supply chains centered in China. Polysilicon for solar cells and rare earth metals are just two of many industries that would very likely be disrupted by a sustained regional-level water and power crisis. The same is true for electric vehicle batteries, where China dominates raw material refining and cell production. [34]

China-centric supply chains took decades to build and, even under emergent conditions, would not be easily or quickly re-shored. But time is of the essence for crafting policies to prepare key global markets for an extended China water crisis event that is among the most important “grey rhino” (i.e., hiding in plain sight) macro risks currently facing the global economy. Global supply chains are not presently prepared for a major drought event in China that disrupts grain trade patterns and key industrial materials production, because the last time China had such a drought, it was not the “factory floor of the world.”

Policy Challenges Ahead — No Silver Bullets

The march toward water bankruptcy is, to quote Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises,” a process that unfolds “gradually, then suddenly.” There is still time for policy interventions to shift China onto a path of sustainable water consumption. However, the universe of potential solutions is bounded by harsh economic, physical and political realities. As former British diplomat and China expert Charlie Parton puts it, “China can print money but it cannot print water.” [35]

Rather than printing water, China faces choices between managing demand through price, convincing people and businesses to change their water use patterns, and building their way toward increased water supplies. None of these offer a “silver bullet.” Much like the energy transition, China’s water transition will require a “silver shotgun shell” incorporating multiple options that complement one another and are not mutually exclusive. Beijing and the broader world must grapple with the reality that most policy options require major tradeoffs on strategic issues such as food self-sufficiency, industrial development, energy and emissions, and relationships with hydrologically-connected neighboring countries. Internally, Chinese policymakers must face the reality that by nature water conflicts are zero-sum, often require redistributive solutions and have tangible impacts that show up quickly. The country’s past 40 years of growth have emphasized a “rising tide lifts all boats” mindset. Water is different, and multiple examples from other countries hint that redistributive solutions could arouse regionalist passions, a matter that, given China’s history of hinterland rebellions, the government would be keen to avoid.

Perhaps the most comprehensive reform would be to make water more expensive to encourage efficiency. Yet China’s input-intensive heavy industrial base, and, perhaps most of all, rural farmers, are accustomed to cheap water. While agriculture accounts for over 60% of China’s water consumption, the vast majority of China’s farms are under three acres in size. Small tracts operating on thin margins may not be able to afford water-saving equipment like drip irrigation. Consolidating them into larger operations would require comprehensive land ownership reform — a politically loaded subject. Moreover, land consolidation alone would likely be insufficient without repricing water; survey data [36] suggest that the default response of farmers in northern China to declining water tables is to simply drill deeper wells and install more powerful pumps — responses that only accelerate the crisis.

The government may also work to shift consumer habits through suasion. Since the early 2000s, the Chinese government has promoted potatoes as a substitute for grain given their lower water intensity. [37] However, such campaigns face deep-seated biases that potatoes are a food of the poor and have had little enforcement, as they belie the Party’s preferred narrative of economic progress. Persuasion campaigns also run afoul of the reality that while the government can use its policing powers to prevent people from doing things it deems undesirable, compelling citizens to do things Beijing wants — having more children, pursuing consumerist ambitions and eating more water-efficient potatoes — is a far harder task.

China’s long history as a global hydraulic engineering superpower — exemplified by the still-operational 2,200-year-old Dujiangyan Irrigation Works in Sichuan [38] — suggests central and local leaders alike may gravitate toward supply-side solutions. The Grand Canal and other internal waterways that have operated for centuries attest to China’s ability to use capital, labor and technical skill to combat hydrological disadvantages. Ongoing work on the $60 billion South-to-North Water Diversion Project represents the modern incarnation of such projects. The scheme’s canals and pumps are now reportedly able to transfer up to 25 billion cubic meters annually of water from the Yangtze River [39] and could ultimately move nearly twice that volume, which would amount to approximately 5% of the river’s current annual discharge. [40] At such scale, the project would become a potential liability if the system intensified water stress in southern China while failing to fully alleviate supply constraints in the North.

Desalination is another potential supply-side solution. Unfortunately, scaling it up to the level needed to materially close northern China’s water supply gap would be a gargantuan task. The roughly 20,000 plants in operation worldwide can produce about 36.5 billion cubic meters of water per year — or roughly 6% of China’s annual water consumption. This highlights the difficulty in relying on desalination to make a meaningful dent in the estimated 25% water supply gap facing the nation.

Desalinated water is also likely unsustainable in energy terms. Academic studies [41] suggest that at the low end, desalination via reverse osmosis requires about 4 kilowatt-hours of energy per cubic meter of water produced — enough to run a typical LED lightbulb for nearly two weeks. Thermal distillation can be five times as energy intensive. [42] As such, producing and transporting enough desalinated seawater to allow the 150 million-odd residents of the North China Plain to each have 1,700 cubic meters of water annually (the baseline below which water stress commences) would potentially consume as much energy each year as the entire country of Japan. This would be nearly 12% of China’s entire current primary energy consumption. Even much lower levels of desalination would still materially impact regional energy demands.

Finally, perhaps the greatest long-term opportunity for China is for the widespread use of drought-resistant seeds and farming techniques, especially given the agricultural sector’s disproportionate share of water consumption. If advanced seed breeding and biotechnology enhancement could drive a 30% reduction in water use for the agricultural sector — which is within the realm of possibility — much of the structural shortfall could be addressed. It is important to note that this does not factor in the risk of further water availability reduction driven by climate change, such as the potential for glacially fed rivers to see large volume declines over the coming decades; in such an outcome, even a 30% reduction in agricultural water use would be insufficient.

“Virtual Water” Fraught with Challenges

“Virtual water,” in the form of agricultural imports such as soybeans, offers another option. China already imports approximately 100 million tonnes per year of soybeans but, as a matter of policy, seeks to maintain a high degree of self-sufficiency in supplies of corn, rice and wheat. Saudi Arabia offers a precedent in using grain imports to rebalance an unsustainable domestic water system. Local agricultural policies had, at one point, made Saudi Arabia a net exporter of wheat, but the drawdown of local groundwater supplies proved unsustainable, and by the mid-2000s the kingdom had taken the strategic decision to import wheat from the global market to reduce local water scarcity. [43]

Iran offers a more cautionary tale on the consequences of defying hydrological realities. Unlike Saudi Arabia, officials in Tehran chose to continue emphasizing grain self-sufficiency at the cost of scarce local water resources. [44] The result has been a compounding water bankruptcy that now sparks violent unrest, [45] exacerbates pre-existing social fault lines and has reached a point of being un-fixable without radical policy shifts — precisely the type of situation China presumably seeks to avoid. While the Saudi example is positive, a Chinese decision to rely more heavily on grain imports would be an unprecedented event for global markets, given that its total grain needs are more than 70 times larger than Saudi Arabia’s. Production in places like Brazil, the U.S. and Russia would take years to materially respond, and sudden large-demand increases from China would likely challenge the stability of the food-energy-water nexus for many grain exporters.

The same law of large numbers would apply to Chinese attempts to further expand farmholdings abroad. Political shifts in breadbaskets like North America and Australia likely foreclose PRC firms’ access to the millions of hectares of farmland it needs to offset domestic water shortfalls. Argentina and Brazil remain question marks. In Eurasia, Russia would be a mercurial partner, and farming operations in Kazakhstan would potentially be subject to Russian veto. Africa, the remaining location with ample land and water, would require massive additional investments in infrastructure to irrigate fields and reliably move grain to ports. As Saudi firms have learned in Ethiopia, foreign farmholdings can rapidly become lightning rods in areas that, in many instances, are already cleft by political instability and physical violence. [46]

China could also seek to import water from further afield in either “wet” or virtual form, such as diverting water from Lake Baikal and other adjacent resource bases. However, such efforts are likely to prove economically infeasible, volumetrically insufficient relative to China’s growing water shortage, too slow to construct or, most likely, all three. Some transboundary water resources are accessible, but at extremely high cost to downstream countries. In the most prominent example, satellite data reveal that China used 10 large dams on the upper reaches of the Mekong River to capture water from the river’s normal wet season flow peaks and retain it for producing hydropower. [47] More low-carbon electrons benefit China’s emissions control efforts, but as Beijing uses the dams to try to reinforce its domestic food-energy-water nexus, it jeopardizes the food and water security of millions downstream in Laos, Cambodia and Thailand.

When the Wells Run Dry

Without urgent action, the impact of China’s water shortages will ripple across the globe and dramatically perturb global markets for food, energy and industrial goods. Sustained water shortages will also force wrenching changes in China’s economy as officials allocate an increasingly scarce, vital resource between agriculture, industry and household usage. The net effect is likely to be further headwinds restraining economic activity in China, which would result in a supply-side shock with few easy avenues of resolution.

A water crisis that curtailed activity in China’s real economy would rapidly morph from a domestic issue to a global macroeconomic crisis. Given the world’s high reliance on China for a wide array of economically critical goods, forced production shutdowns due to water shortages would cripple supply chains across the globe. Further, the disruption to agricultural markets would place enormous stress on countries that rely on large quantities of imported food — many of which already suffer from political instability.

China’s water crisis presents a policy challenge that is “too big to let fail” but also “not too big to fix” if decisive actions are taken now. Much of the work will, by necessity, be conducted in China under Beijing’s political mandates, but to the extent the U.S. and its allies can assist, it is in their interest to do so. Addressing China’s water crisis and its pressure on the food-energy-water nexus is one of the precious few areas where bilateral cooperation may still be possible.

The U.S. must also take urgent action to decouple its most critical supply chains from China as quickly and comprehensively as possible. Time is of the essence, and policymakers should treat this as one of their most urgent tasks, assuming a three to five-year timetable for substantial completion. Likewise, water and climate experts in places like Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine and the U.S. should urgently consider how their agricultural and water systems could — or could not — respond if asked to meet the call triggered by a sustained failure of grain harvests in China.

The world faces an energy transition challenge of unprecedented scale that dominates the headlines, but the food-energy-water nexus deserves equal, if not more, attention. As China’s water clock relentlessly ticks toward a global crisis, decisive steps must be taken while there is still time to act.

[1] “Explainer: The power crunch in China's Sichuan and why it matters,” Reuters, August 26, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/world/china/power-crunch-chinas-sichuan-why-it-matters-2022-08-26/ .

[2] Water Footprint Network, “Product Gallery,” n.d., https://waterfootprint.org/en/resources/interactive-tools/product-gallery/ .

[3] Javier Lozano Parra, Manuel Pulido Fernández, and Jacinto Garrido Velarde, “The Availability of Water in Chile: A Regional View from a Geographical Perspective,” in Resources of Water, eds. Prathna Thanjavur Chandrasekaran, Muhammad Salik Javaid, and Aftab Sadiq (IntechOpen, 2020) http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.92169 .

[4] “Reimagining WASH: Water Security for All,” UNICEF, March 2021, https://www.unicef.org/media/95241/file/water-security-for-all.pdf .

[5] Siao Sun et al., “Domestic groundwater depletion supports China's full supply chains,” Water Resources Research 58, no. 5 (May 2022), https://doi.org/10.1029/2021WR030695 .

[6] “How Does Water Security Affect China’s Development?” Center for Strategic and International Studies, China Power Project, n.d., https://chinapower.csis.org/china-water-security/ .

[7] View our data on China’s fertilizer use and pesticide use . (Data derived from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization).

[8] Carla Freeman, “Quenching the Thirsty Dragon: The South-North Water Transfer Project—Old Plumbing for New China?” Wilson Center, n.d., https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/quenching-the-thirsty-dragon-the-south-north-water-transfer-project-old-plumbing-for-new .

[9] Zhang Wenjing, Jiang Hong, and Sarah Rogers, “The next phase of China’s water infrastructure: a national water grid,” China Dialogue, March 16, 2022, https://chinadialogue.net/en/cities/the-next-phase-of-chinas-water-infrastructure-a-national-water-grid/ .

[10] Changxin Xu, Lihua Yang, Bin Zhang, and Min Song, “Bargaining power and information asymmetry in China’s water market: an empirical two-tier stochastic frontier analysis,” Empirical Economics 61, no. 5 (2020): 2395-2418, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00181-020-01972-7 .

[11] “China's southern megacities warn of water shortages during East River drought,” Reuters, December 9, 2021, https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/chinas-southern-megacities-warn-water-shortages-during-east-river-drought-2021-12-09/ .

[12] “Annual Freshwater Withdrawals, Total (Billion Cubic Meters),” The World Bank, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ER.H2O.FWTL.K3 ; “Annual Freshwater Withdrawals, Agriculture (% of Total Freshwater Withdrawal),” The World Bank, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ER.H2O.FWAG.ZS .

[13] “The Water Content of Things: How much water does it take to grow a hamburger?” United States Geological Survey, n.d., https://water.usgs.gov/edu/activity-watercontent.php .

[14] Gabriel Collins. 2017. Carbohydrates, H2O, and Hydrocarbons: Grain Supply Security and the Food-Water-Energy Nexus in the Arabian Gulf Region. Research paper no. 06.01.17. Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, Houston, Texas, published in conjunction with Qatar Leadership Centre. https://www.bakerinstitute.org/sites/default/files/2017-09/import/CES-pub-QLC_Nexus-061317.pdf .

[15] “Annual Freshwater Withdrawals, agriculture (% of total freshwater withdrawal),” The World Bank, n.d., https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ER.H2O.FWAG.ZS?locations=CN .

[16] Gabriel B. Collins and Andrew S. Erickson, “Keeping the Mandate of Heaven: Why China’s Leaders Focus Heavily on Grain Prices and Security,” China SignPost™ (洞察中国), no. 22, February 17, 2011, https://www.chinasignpost.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/China-SignPost_22_Keeping-the-Mandate-of-Heaven_Grain-supply-problems-a-major-political-risk_20110217.pdf .

[17] View our data on China’s arable and irrigated lands .

[18] View our data on agricultural land use in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Russia, Ukraine and the United States , for comparison to China’s land use.

[19] Jinxia Wang, Jikun Huang, Qiuqiong Huang, and Scott Rozelle, “Privatization of tubewells in North China: Determinants and impacts on irrigated area, productivity and the water table,” Hydrogeology Journal 14 (2006): 275–285, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10040-005-0482-1 ; Wei Feng et al., “Evaluation of groundwater depletion in North China using the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) data and ground-based measurements,” Water Resources Research 49, no. 4 (2013): 2110-2118, https://doi.org/10.1002/wrcr.20192 .

[20] Ujjayant Chakravorty et al., “A Tale of Two Roads: Groundwater Depletion in the North China Plain,” December 2019, https://www.aeaweb.org/conference/2020/preliminary/paper/rZe7Nd99 .

[21] Justin C. Thompson, Charles W. Kreitler, and Michael H. Young, “Exploring Groundwater Recoverability in Texas: Maximum Economically Recoverable Storage,” Texas Water Journal 11, no. 9 (2020): 152-171, https://journals.tdl.org/twj/index.php/twj/article/view/7113/6472 .

[22] We use 33% as a benchmark loss factor based on the recent real-world experience of a serious drought and its impact on grain crops in Argentina. See “Severe drought impacts on Argentine corn and soybean crop estimates,” MercoPress, March 9, 2022, https://en.mercopress.com/2022/03/09/severe-drought-impacts-on-argentine-corn-and-soybean-crop-estimates .

[23] “Severe drought impacts on Argentine corn and soybean crop estimates,” MercoPress.

[24] View our data on China’s global staple grain production share . (Data derived from a custom run of the USDA's PSD system https://apps.fas.usda.gov/psdonline/app/index.html#/app/advQuery ).

[25] Iracema F. A Cavalcanti and Vernon E. Kousky, “Drought In Brazil During Summer And Fall 2001 And Associated Atmospheric Circulation Features,” Center of Climate Prediction, National Centers Environmental Prediction, 2004, http://bit.ly/3Ep1UEL .

[26] “Brazil minister warns of deeper energy crisis amid worsening drought,” Reuters, August 31, 2021, https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/brazil-minister-warns-deeper-energy-crisis-amid-worsening-drought-2021-08-31/ .

[27] Jeff Fick, “Petrobras triples LNG imports in 2021 amid drought, pipeline work,” S&P Global Commodity Insights, January 13, 2022, https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-insights/latest-news/natural-gas/011322-petrobras-triples-lng-imports-in-2021-amid-drought-pipeline-work .

[28] “Global Coal Plant Tracker,” Global Energy Monitor, https://globalenergymonitor.org/projects/global-coal-plant-tracker/ .

[29] View our data on China’s utility-scale coal units .

[30] X. W. Liao et al., “Water shortage risks for China's coal power plants under climate change,” Environmental Research Letters 16 (2021), https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abba52 .

[31] “Electricity consumption from January to December 2021,” China Electricity Council, January 18, 2022, https://cec.org.cn/detail/index.html?3-305885 .

[32] “Chinese magnesium supplies pick up as production resumes,” Shaanxi News, November 19, 2021, http://en.shaanxi.gov.cn/news/sn/202111/t20211119_2200973.html .

[33] Andy Home, “Column: Europe's magnesium crunch poses another carbon conundrum: Andy Home,” Reuters, October 26, 2021, https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/europes-magnesium-crunch-poses-another-carbon-conundrum-andy-home-2021-10-26/ .

[34] Ben Kilbey, “China continues to dominate global EV supply chain: BNEF,” S&P Global Commodity Insights, September 16, 2020, https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-insights/latest-news/electric-power/091620-china-continues-to-dominate-global-ev-supply-chain-bnef .

[35] Charlie Parton, “China’s Looming Water Crisis,” China Dialogue, April 2018, http://bit.ly/3E0gX6r .

[36] Jinxia Wang et al., “Groundwater irrigation and management in northern China: status, trends, and challenges,” International Journal of Water Resources Development, 2019, https://doi.org/10.1080/07900627.2019.1584094 .

[37] Niu Shuping and David Stanway, “Chinese potatoes to chip in as water shortages hit staple crops,” Reuters, July 30, 2015, https://www.reuters.com/article/china-agriculture-potato/chinese-potatoes-to-chip-in-as-water-shortages-hit-staple-crops-idUSL3N10A1TO20150730 .

[38] “Mount Qingcheng and the Dujiangyan Irrigation System,” UNESCO, n.d., https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1001/ .

[39] Jon Barnett et al., “Sustainability: Transfer project cannot meet China's water needs,” Nature 527 (2015): 295-297, https://doi.org/10.1038/527295a .

[40] S. L. Yang et al., “Trends in annual discharge from the Yangtze River to the sea (1865–2004),” Hydrological Sciences Journal 50, no. 5 (2009), https://doi.org/10.1623/hysj.2005.50.5.825 .

[41] Collins, Carbohydrates, H2O, and Hydrocarbons.

[42] Collins, Carbohydrates, H2O, and Hydrocarbons.

[43] Collins, Carbohydrates, H2O, and Hydrocarbons.

[44] Gabriel Collins. 2017. Iran’s Looming Water Bankruptcy. Research Paper no. 04.04.17. Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, Houston, Texas. https://www.bakerinstitute.org/research/irans-looming-water-bankruptcy .

[45] 'Give Isfahan Life!' Water Shortages Unleash Waves Of Protest In Iran,” RFE/RL's Radio Farda, November 24, 2021, https://www.rferl.org/a/iran-water-shortages-protests/31577306.html .

[46] Tom Burgis, “The great land rush — Ethiopia: The billionaire’s farm,” Financial Times Investigations, n.d., https://ig.ft.com/sites/land-rush-investment/ethiopia/ .

[47] Brian Eyler et al., “Mekong Dam Monitor at One Year: What Have We Learned?” Stimson Center, 2022, https://www.stimson.org/2022/mdm-one-year-findings/ .

This material may be quoted or reproduced without prior permission, provided appropriate credit is given to the author and Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. The views expressed herein are those of the individual author(s), and do not necessarily represent the views of Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy.

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China’s water challenges: national and global implications.

China’s environmental challenges have received wide attention in recent years. A variety of disturbing images and stories from media outlets have fueled a pervasive image of China as an environmental wasteland, while expanding scholarship has inventoried China’s air, water, and land problems. Reasonable observers can disagree on the prescriptive responses necessary to address such challenges, but there seems little disagreement that a fundamental tension has existed between China’s breakneck economic development and its environmental setting over the past several decades. Although there has been substantial analysis of China’s role in recent international climate change negotiations, there has been little exploration of how China’s environmental challenges may impact the country’s internal economic, political, and social trajectories. Ultimately, the domestic and international repercussions of China’s resource challenges will implicate global networks. Indeed, in a recent assessment of global challenges in the period up to 2025, the US National Intelligence Council lists resource bottlenecks as a “key uncertainty” that contains “the risk of great power confrontations.” 1 Indeed, some estimates suggest that by 2030 nearly half the world’s population will be living in areas of acute water shortage. Of added significance is the interconnectedness of water with a variety of contemporary challenges such as food security, energy security, and environmental security. Indeed, this nexus of issues is at play in China and will continue to shape China’s internal economic, social, and political dynamics, as well as its role in international networks, for the foreseeable future.

The goal of the article is not to provide an exhaustive catalog of potential outcomes arising from China’s water predicament, but instead to highlight several key examples to suggest the range of water-related issues impacting China and the critical importance these realities may have in shaping China’s internal and external dynamics. But before exploring these critical policy-related questions, we begin by examining the biophysical setting of water on the North China Plain—one of the most water-challenged regions of China and the world.

Water and Climate in China

Although China ranks fourth in global freshwater reserves, it possesses the second-lowest per capita water supply of any country in the world. 2 One of the most critical areas of shortage is the North China Plain, a region covering approximately 409,500 square kilometers (158,000 square miles). Despite the fact that one of China’s mighty rivers flows through this region, compared to the more humid south, north China’s limited water resources have been a persistent challenge to human communities inhabiting the plain for centuries. The Yellow River Valley and the North China Plain constitute one of the economic and social cores of China—generating over 20 percent of the nation’s grain supply and among the most densely populated regions in the world. However, water in the region has become an endangered commodity. The North China Plain accounts for less than 10 percent of China’s total water resources, despite sustaining over 30 percent of its population. Per capita water availability on the North China Plain is 225 cubic meters (59,439 gallons) per year, while China’s average per capita water supply is 2,300 cubic meters (607,596 gallons). For the past several decades, per capita water resources in North China averaged one-tenth the world average. Rapid economic development since 1978 has had profound consequences for the limited water resources of the North China Plain region. Water tables have declined by an average of 1.5 meters (1.64 yards) per year since 1990. In 1997, the river ran dry 780 kilometers (485 miles) upstream from the river mouth. 3 At the same time, industrial, agricultural, and household pollutants have rendered water in downstream segments of the river unsafe for any use.

The North China Plain accounts for less than 10 percent of China’s total water resources, despite sustaining over 30 percent of its population.

Photo of construction in the central business district of Beijing

What forces have generated these increasingly severe water problems on the North China Plain? To be sure, hyper-economic growth since 1978 has unleashed voracious demand to accommodate industrial expansion, urban growth, and agricultural intensification. At the same time, however, we must also examine water management during the Maoist period (1949– 1978). After 1949, the government of the People’s Republic of China sought to promote rapid agricultural and industrial development consistent with building “Communist modernity.” Breakneck expansion of irrigation facilities resulted in massive exploitation of surface and groundwater supplies, with little concern for conservation or water quality. In short, the water management practices of the Maoist period cast a long shadow over water resources in the post-Mao era.

Photo of protesters wearing facemasks on the street

China itself is a microcosm of global water problems. On a per capita basis, there is sufficient water across the globe to meet human demand. The critical problem, of course, is distribution. The north-south hydrologic divide in China mirrors global inequities in water availability. Pollution also hits those regions harder that have limited water resources. At the same time, global demand is dominated by agricultural irrigation, while urban and industrial uses increasingly compete with the rural sector for water. What requires our attention in China are the potential internal and external consequences of these water dynamics. How might resource constraints affect China’s economic performance? This is a fundamental question, and the political and social stability of China rests, in part, on its outcome. And given the increasing ties that bind global economic health with China’s economic health, water constraints in China have the potential to shape global exchange. Considering China’s 1.4 billion people, what happens politically in China is a global issue. That these questions of national and global stability rest on a historically marginal ecological foundation is of course rather remarkable. But what compels our further attention is the compounding effects of global climate change. Climate change is the wild card that looms large in Chinese policy and scientific circles, and is one factor that generates a fixation on supply as the state aggressively pursues massive engineering projects on the Himalayan and Tibetan plateaus.

Water and the Shaping of Internal Political Discourse

Water scarcity and its impact on economic opportunity could develop into an important faultline for the nation’s political stability. The introduction of market forces beginning in 1978 had a potent transformative effect on the social and economic landscape of China. The consequences of urbanization and rapid industrialization generated water quantity and quality challenges. These problems began to obstruct further economic restructuring, while at the same time creating social and political tensions.

The Growth of Environmental Consciousness

Over the past two decades, environmental transformations have introduced new values and actors into China’s water sector. The human, material, and cultural costs of all water projects—from local, small-scale water development to massive projects such as Three Gorges and the Southto-North Water Diversion Project—have generated fissures and have brought about a growing sensitivity to the environmental consequences of breakneck economic development. From prominent activists like Dai Qing and Ma Jun and civil society organizations like Friends of Nature to local groups reacting to problems in their backyards, state and party are faced with interest groups that can articulate opposition to national policies and local conditions (rural and urban) that resonate across China. While the party has occasionally tacitly encouraged moderate environmental activism and reportage to help the central government enforce environmental mandates on recalcitrant local governments and enterprises, it is keenly aware of the role played by environmental protesters as the leading edge of a broader oppositional agenda in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc states.

Data released a decade ago on public protests and disturbances stunned many observers in China and abroad. A large number of these protests was sparked by grievances over water supply. Water disputes increased from 16,747 in 1986 to 94,405 in 2004. From the protests in 2000, when thousands of angry Shandong farmers responded to inadequate water supply by diverting reservoir water that had been allocated to Beijing, to the violent clashes between several thousands of villagers relocated for the South-to-North Water Diversion Projects, many of these protests emanated in rural areas. Access to sufficient quantities of clean water is one component of China’s growing urban-rural divide. Furthermore, the water available to rural users is often polluted from agricultural runoff or from insufficiently regulated rural enterprises. Certainly, urban constituencies are not immune to water problems, as evinced by the headline-grabbing spill of 100 tons of the carcinogen benzene into the Songhua River in 2005.

Rural Chinese, however, lack institutional structures to cope with the economic and health consequences of water degradation. Public health systems in rural China are hard-pressed to manage water-borne diseases such as diarrhea, which is the leading cause of death among rural children under five years of age. Frustration over water quantity and quality is one component of a “perfect storm” that, combined with other factors (like environmental issues, corruption, income disparities, and a fraying social safety net), could “present a unifying focal point for dissent that crosses geographic, cultural, socioeconomic, and political lines.” 4

Picture of smoke coming out of nuclear power plants

Water and Agriculture

Perhaps the single-greatest concern related to water in China is food. With just 7 percent of the world’s arable land, China attempts to feed roughly one-quarter of the world’s population. Maintaining grain self-sufficiency requires maintaining sufficient land under cultivation with access to clean surface and subsurface water supplies. Indeed, over half of China’s farmland is irrigated. During the past several decades, estimates of China’s agricultural acreage have diverged rather dramatically, but a central concern of state leaders has been to limit the impact of rapid urbanization and industrial development on land resources. But this has been a difficult task. With incessant pressures of economic development forces, and with the limited reach of the central government in regulating unchecked urban and industrial expansion, central mandates designed to preserve farmland have been compromised. Complicating the food security calculus has been the evolution of consumption patterns that have driven changes in agricultural production. The diets of increasingly affluent urban consumers has diversified; farmers moved up the value-added production chain from grains to fruits, vegetables, and nuts. Second, larger supplies of grain are necessary to feed livestock, as urban consumers increasingly incorporate animal proteins in their diets. With available grain production for human consumption stressed by land and water constraints, and production and consumption patterns influenced by the domestic market, the challenge for China to meet its oft-stated goal of food self-sufficiency is to maximize grain production by stabilizing agricultural acreage and maintaining access to clean irrigation water. Chinese farmers produce roughly 90 percent of the country’s staple agricultural products, but the pressures of demographic expansion, as well as industrial and urban expansion, continue apace.

The critically important issue is how to use water more efficiently in the agricultural sector. There is significant capacity in China’s irrigation infrastructure to increase water efficiency, but ambiguous property rights and a fractured administrative structure are significant obstacles to implementation of demand management policies. At the same time, pollution limits access to clean surface and groundwater sources. The pressures on China’s agricultural economy have generated a pernicious cycle that contributes to degraded water resources. Intensification of fertilizer use, a critical input to increasing agricultural yields, has at the same time generated pollution of farmland irrigation sources and waterways. As reported by Renmin University in Beijing, China produced roughly 24 percent of world grain output, but “its use of fertilizer accounted for more than 35 percent of total global consumption,” suggesting the significant intensification of agricultural cultivation. The report goes on to note that China’s grain production had increased more than eightfold from the 1960s, while use of nitrogen fertilizers had surged by about fifty-five times.” 5

With just 7 percent of the world’s arable land, China attempts to feed roughly one-quarter of the world’s population.

Water and the Government Bureaucracy

Water stresses may also continue to generate tensions within the bureaucratic fabric of China. The allocation of scarce water resources falls within the administrative bailiwick of a dizzying number of government ministries and agencies. Decision-making processes within this fractured bureaucracy are notoriously characterized by competing interests and mistrust. Once decisions are made, these competing interests again shape implementation, and the interests of provincial and local governments have proved remarkably immune to central government mandates. To cite one fundamental problem of allocation between rural and urban constituents: the Ministry of Water Resources reports that 60 percent of China’s cities face water shortages, while Beijing (on the North China Plain) has access to one-third of the world average per capita supply. 6 In rural sectors, it is estimated that 500 million residents are exposed to contaminated drinking water. There are myriad central, provincial, and municipal agencies involved in adjudicating these water allocation and water degradation issues. The Ministry of Water Resources, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Industry, and the Ministry of Environmental Protection are just a few of the government agencies, and at only the central level, that have critical interests in water administration. Bureaucratic constituencies fracture and coalesce around water policy. In the same spirit, provincial-level compacts regulating water withdrawals from interprovincial waterways are notoriously contentious and lack effective oversight mechanisms. Thus, water constraints hold the potential to create disequilibria within a state administrative structure already stressed by bureaucratic fault lines.

There has been comparatively little discussion of how China’s concerns over water and food security might shape interstate relations, particularly in Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

Screen capture of two men are talking on the fields

Water and China’s International Networks

There has been comparatively little discussion of how China’s concerns over water and food security might shape interstate relations, particularly in Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. What are the potential implications of China’s water and food security concerns for the global community? China has sought to ameliorate domestic agricultural production bottlenecks, deflect reliance on international markets, and minimize future price volatility by investing in agricultural land and production abroad. These efforts have mixed consequences for global interests. Chinese purchases on international corn and soybean markets will benefit global grain-producing regions. At the same time, China’s investments in agricultural regions of Africa and Southeast Asia may pose challenges to the interests of a variety of polities in those regions.

Map for "The Yellow River: The Problem of Water in Modern China"

Rivers Originating on the Tibetan Plateau, and the Countries They Flow Into (from west to east) Indus: Ladakh District of Jammu, Kashmir, and Pakistan Yarlung Zangbo/Brahmaputra River: India and Bangladesh Irrawaddy: Myanmar (its source is in a disputed territory on the Mynamar-Tibet border) Nu Jiang/Salween: Myanmar and Thailand Lancang Jiang/Mekong River: Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Việt Nam Yuan/Red River : Việt Nam

The estimated fifteen to twenty million hectares (over forty-nine million acres) of global farmland that have been subject to negotiations or transactions in the last decade have provoked charges of a “new colonialism.” Much of this investment is sponsored by states that seek to bypass world markets in order to secure grain for consumption and biofuel feed stocks. Critics argue that foreign land acquisitions create conditions for continued economic impoverishment in South and Southeast Asia, and in African countries. On the other hand, many developing nations see foreign land investments as a method for providing needed technology, knowledge of advanced practices, and employment. As many have argued, global movement of agricultural commodities is really trade in water. Thus, it is no coincidence that many of the most aggressive government-sponsored investments in agricultural farmland emanate from regions that are water-poor. And China’s “resource diplomacy” is generally conducted solely on economic terms, little encumbered with issues such as human rights or terrorism. This generated much discussion during the Barack Obama administration about China’s role as a “responsible stakeholder” in global affairs.

Global Food Safety and Health

China’s water resource challenges are increasingly linked to food quality and health issues in and outside China. China exports significant quantities of food products. Much of the concern over China’s food exports have centered on fish and fish products. The importance of farm-raised fish has become increasingly critical to global food production. Stocks of consumable ocean fish have declined substantially in the face of ravenous global demand for seafood. China has responded to this demand by producing some 70 percent of all farm-raised seafood in the world. Some of this is consumed domestically, but at the same time, China has become the number 1 exporter of fish in the world. Agricultural runoff, municipal waste, and industrial effluents have all been sources of water contamination of China’s freshwater fisheries. In mid-2010, the China Daily reported a particularly serious incident in Fujian Province where toxic waste from a local copper mine resulted in the loss of 1,890 tons of fish. In many instances, waste from fish-producing ponds is recycled into local water systems. Further compounding the problem is the use of antibiotics in fish feed to maintain the health of fish in contaminated waters. These drugs concentrate in the muscle tissue of fish, leaving potentially carcinogenic residue.

A second global health problem related to China’s water scarcity is the development and spread of zoonotic diseases (diseases transmitted between animals and people). Outbreaks of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and avian flu have shed light on the transmission of viruses from animals to humans. The emergence of pandemic diseases is likely to occur in regions with high population densities and close association between human and animals. The 2003 SARS outbreak in China reflected many of these ecological dynamics. In addition, “Scientists have become increasingly aware of the linkage between emergence of outbreaks in zoonotic diseases and the destruction of natural habitat of animal hosts, climatic changes due to global warming, and other environmental changes caused by humans.” 7 Water shortages are among the outcomes of environmental change that may be critical to the development of pandemic diseases. Water shortages have intensified the human-animal interface, providing appropriate environmental conditions for the spread of zoonotic diseases. China fits this profile of ecological transformations, high population densities, and close human-animal interface that may foster the emergence of pandemic diseases that ignore national borders.

Climate Change and the “Water Tower of Asia”

Climate change is the potential game changer in the millennia-long struggle to manage the scarce resources of the North China Plain. Recession of Himalayan glaciers and of the snowpack on the Tibetan/Qinghai Plateau will have serious consequences for China’s rivers that feed and water high population densities in eastern China, but that also sustain the population and economies of South and Southeast Asia. During the past decade, the state channeled substantial money to research institutions like the Academy of Sciences to forecast the potential consequences of climate change. Of particular concern in this research agenda is the fate of precipitation, glaciers, and snowpack on the Tibet/Qinghai Plateau. The melt from glaciers and annual snowfall from the region feed rivers that serve 47 percent of the world’s people. There is little agreement on the precise outcomes of climate change, but a growing body of Chinese and international research suggests that the Himalayan region will be substantially affected by rising temperatures. Greater runoff will initially generate increased flows that will augment water supplies, but over the long term, runoff will decrease and other potential consequences of climate change, such as reduced precipitation in the Yellow River Valley and North China Plain, will intensify water scarcity. According to a 2007 Chinese study, Himalayan glaciers could decline by one-third by 2050 and one-half by 2090. The anticipated loss of water resources would have a negative impact on China’s food production. A China Daily article argued that “the impact of climate change, coupled with arable land loss and water shortages, will cause a bigger grain production fluctuation and pose a threat to reaching output targets . . . China, which recorded a grain output of 530.8 million tons in 2009, plans to increase output to 550 million tons by 2020 to ensure grain security for the world’s most populous country. China is likely to face an inadequate food supply by 2030, and its overall food production could fall by 23 percent by 2050.” 8 In addition to responses such as accelerating use of genetically modified, drought-resistant grains, China will more aggressively increase reservoir capacity on transnational waterways in southwest China.

An important reason for China to develop these Himalayan water resources is the need to address regional economic imbalances by developing the economy of western China .

An important reason for China to develop these Himalayan water resources is the need to address regional economic imbalances by developing the economy of western China. State leaders see hydroelectric generation as a source of cheap energy to develop Tibet and the southwest provinces, as well as a way to send electricity to industrial centers in Guangdong Province. Both private capital markets and power generation corporations with significant state ties have capitalized on improved transportation infrastructure and technical capacities to target Himalayan rivers for the development of hydroelectric facilities. Aside from their relative distance from population and industrial centers, one could not find better prospects for power generation than these rivers. Rising high out of the Tibetan Plateau, the steep gradient of these rivers provides hydroelectric potential unmatched in China. As of 2007, there were over 200 dams that were under construction, or in planning stages, in southwest China.

What will the consequences be for regional economic and political stability as China aggressively develops transboundary water resources? Asia’s nine largest rivers originate on the Tibetan Plateau. Rivers from this region sustain the lives of 1.3 billion people in South and Southeast Asia. For example, over 50 percent of the Brahmaputra River flows through China, but the vast majority of use occurs downstream in India, Nepal, and Bangladesh. The Mekong runs through China, Burma, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Việt Nam. In the lower basin, sixty million people rely on aquatic food sources for 80 percent of their protein needs.

China controls the “water tower of Asia.” With such awesome hold over the resource lifeline of the region, the country is faced with critical decisions about how to wield that power. On the one hand, China’s sensitivities to resource dependency lead it to be “one of only three UN member countries to reject the notion that states have the right not to be adversely affected by activities of upstream countries. Beijing asserts complete sovereignty over resources within its boundaries.” 9 However, unilateral development of transboundary waterways will come at the high cost of alienating China’s neighbors, one of them in possession of advanced military capabilities. Managing its transboundary rivers affords China an opportunity to engage in regional development forums. One regional association with which China has had an ambiguous relationship is the Mekong River Commission (MRC), created in 1957 by riparian countries (those who share a river) to consult on issues of common interest in river development. China is not a formal member of the commission, but has made halting steps to share upstream flow and rainfall data with MRC members. However, it has largely been resistant to consultations involving upstream reservoir management or development plans.

In short, China’s water resource challenges, most acutely reflected on the North China Plain, implicate national, regional, and global security dimensions. Internally, water constraints will continue to affect economic growth in China. The health of the global economy depends on a vibrant Chinese economy. The potential consequences of water scarcity, combined with health concerns engendered by polluted water, can have an impact on political stability. Environmental frustration can be one component of a suite of grievances that can collectively contribute to political instability. A politically unstable China unquestionably translates into an entire host of concerns for global security. At the regional and international levels, global climate change will likely condition China’s relations with South and Southeast Asian countries, as the challenges of managing these relationships are accentuated by the diminishing water resources of the Tibetan-Himalayan region. Incorporating China into governance organizations such as the Mekong River Commission can help stabilize this region. Globally, continued economic expansion, coupled with demographic growth and climate change, will intensify water resource constraints and may impel China to take a more aggressive posture in international grain markets and investment in agricultural resources like land. Finally, China’s water quality and quantity issues are directly connected with global food safety and health issues. These dynamics suggest that China and the international community have mutual interests in managing China’s water challenges.

Water Issues in China

As China’s population and economy have grown, so has its thirst for water. Today China is the world’s biggest water user, accounting for 13 percent of the world’s freshwater consumption. 26 Not only do humans use water for drinking; we use it to wash our clothes, bathe, cook, and clean. On a larger scale, water is heavily used for countless other purposes such as industrial manufacturing, household plumbing, raising agriculture and livestock, and even producing energy. All of these processes require good, clean water. Luckily, China is home to many sources of fresh water. People have relied on these sources—rivers, lakes, rain, and aquifers—for thousands of years. In a country that is experiencing such rapid urbanization and economic development, however, clean water is becoming more and more scarce. Aquifer levels are dropping, lakes are disappearing, rivers are drying up or becoming polluted, and air contaminants are producing acid rain. Water shortages plague over half of China’s cities. 27 Today, water is one of China’s Imost crucial issues.

China’s current water crisis is driven by two primary factors. The first of these is China’s uneven distribution of water. Because of its large and diverse geography, China has a wide spectrum of terrains and climate zones. While southern and eastern China enjoy abundant rainfall, the northern and western regions of the country receive very little. This weather pattern can lead to unfortunate and seemingly contradictory effects, with some provinces battling floods while others are suffering from months-long droughts. Between mid-April and the end of May 2006, southern and northeastern China endured three brutal rainstorms, bringing rainfall of 400 millimeters (15.7 inches) or more per day. This resulted in regional flooding, destruction of vast crop fields and thousands of homes, 60 to 70 human deaths, and economic losses of nearly $1.6 billion. At the same time, however, northern China was experiencing a severe drought that affected or threatened 182 million hectares (450 million acres) of farmland, 8.7 million livestock, and 95 million people. 28 Beijing, the nation’s capital in northern China, was suffering its worst drought in 50 years. It received only 17 millimeters (0.7 inches) of rain in four months—a fraction of a day’s rainfall in southern China. 29

Extremes in this climate pattern have led to problems for China. Although the floods in April and May 2006 were damaging to the cities and communities of southern China, they were not nearly as disastrous as others in China’s recent history. For example, one flood in 1998 caused the Yangtze River—China’s largest—to overflow, killing more than 3,500 people, damaging or destroying more than 21 million houses, and causing economic losses of $32 billion. 30 Another flood in 1954 was even worse, taking 30,000 lives. 31 To address the common flooding of the south, China has recently built the Three Gorges Dam, an ambitious and controversial project meant to monitor and control the Yangtze’s water levels to prevent future floods.

Northern China faces the opposite problem: it often receives far too little rainwater. In the north, the demand for water surpasses the available supply, largely because it has two-thirds of China’s total cropland and 43 percent of its population, but only 14 percent of its water supply. 32,33 Beijing and other northern cities and communities have had to rely on other sources of water to irrigate their crops, run their cities, and feed their people. Although northern China sits atop two large underground aquifers, so much water is being drained from them that their levels are dropping at an incredible rate. In Hebei Province next to Beijing, the water level of the deep aquifer falls three meters every year. 34 Rivers are also used for their water, but overuse has diminished even the Yellow River to a trickle. The Yellow River—northern China’s main river—has dried up every year since 1985. 35 With aquifers and rivers suffering from overuse, lakes are also being affected. Hebei has already lost 969 of its 1,052 lakes. 36 Yet with all of northern China’s water resources being tapped, water shortages still cost the Chinese economy a lot of money. According to one report, water shortages are responsible for direct economic losses of $35 billion annually, about 2.5 times the average annual losses due to floods. 37

Besides the disparity in water supply between the north and south, China’s water crisis has a second factor: pollution. Even in water-rich areas of China, pollution is decreasing the supply of clean, usable water. According to estimates, a full 70 percent of China’s rivers and lakes are currently contaminated, half of China’s cities have groundwater that is significantly polluted, and one-third of China’s landmass is affected by acid rain. 38,39,40 Today, most of the Yellow River is unfit even for swimming, and experts have called the Yangtze “cancerous.” 41 Because hundreds of cities—including large ones like Shanghai and Chongqing—rely on these rivers for their drinking water, people all over the country are suffering from China’s water pollution crisis. The central government has begun to fight the pollution problem by issuing stricter regulations on pollutants and spending billions of dollars on water projects, but water quality is generally still poor. In 2006, Chongqing’s tap water contained 80 of 101 banned pollutants. 42

Causes and Effects

China’s water crisis is both natural and man-made. For example, China’s northern regions are arid because of its natural geography and climate patterns, but humans have made these effects even worse. Rapid climate change, which most scientists consider largely human-influenced, is shortening China’s rainy seasons and melting important glaciers that feed the Yellow River. 43 Northern China’s rivers are drying up as they are strained by a growing population, more factories, and water-hungry crop fields. Overgrazing by livestock—which have become incredibly numerous—has turned grasslands into sandy deserts, which in turn has caused ecosystems to lose their natural water-trapping capabilities and become even dryer. 44 In this way, many of China’s water problems stem from both natural and human causes.

Although the water crisis affects the whole country, farmers experience a large part of its effects, simply because of economic reasons. Growing food is water intensive, but not highly profitable. A farmer needs 1,000 tons of water to produce a ton of wheat worth $150, whereas a factory needs only 14 tons of water to produce a ton of steel worth $550. In China, where the government is desperate to create jobs and grow the economy, it makes economic sense to prioritize a steel factory’s water needs over a farmer’s. Thus, farmers’ needs are often sacrificed. In Beijing, for example, water was diverted from the Juma River to supply a petrochemical company, while 120,000 villagers downstream watched the river dry up, no longer able to use the Juma for irrigation. 45 Episodes like this are not uncommon.

Farmers sometimes contribute to China’s water scarcity and pollution problems as well. The high water-cost of irrigation—which accounts for 70 percent of water use worldwide 46 —is often raised even higher in China by inefficient irrigation methods. In addition, the agricultural chemicals (like pesticides and fertilizers) that are used on crops sometimes turn into toxic runoff that can pollute groundwater. 47

Factories are even worse polluters, releasing untreated waste and chemicals into China’s rivers. Many times, the pollution happens by accident. According to authorities, one pollution accident occurs every two to three days in China. 48 In one case, in 2005, a chemical explosion at a petrochemical plant spilled 100 tons of pollutants into the Songhua River, forcing the downstream city of Harbin to shut down its entire water system, leaving 3.8 million residents without water for four days. 49 But most times, pollution is intentional; the same petrochemical plant has released more than 150 tons of mercury into the Songhua since it was built. 50 About 80 percent of China’s 7,500 dirtiest factories are located on rivers, lakes, or in heavily populated areas, so the potential for future pollution—accidental or not—is enormous. 51

In terms of health, China’s water crisis has had serious consequences. About 300 million people in China—a quarter of its population (or a number equivalent to the entire U.S. population)—drink contaminated water every day. Almost two-thirds of these people—190 million—fall ill. Children are suffering, too, with more than 30,000 dying each year from diarrhea caused by contaminated water. In addition, China’s water has been blamed for the recent high rates of various health abnormalities like cancer, stunted growth, low IQs, miscarriages, and birth defects. 52

Efforts to solve these water problems have sometimes created additional problems. To control flooding, numerous dams have been built on China’s waterways. These dams are meant to allow humans to control the water level of river “reservoirs” so that, in the event of heavy rains, the region will not flood. However, China’s past dams have been unreliable. Between 1954 and 2005, 3,486 reservoirs collapsed in China, 68 in 2005 alone. 53 In 1975, two Huai River dams collapsed, killing an estimated 30,000 to 100,000 people. 54

China is now completing its largest, most ambitious dam ever, the Three Gorges Dam. It will create a reservoir extending 600km (375 miles) behind the dam, raising the water level of the Yangtze, and submerging farmland, houses, temples, factories, towns, and entire cities—not to mention some of China’s most famous scenery. 55,56 In exchange, the Three Gorges Dam is intended to prevent flood disasters downstream, potentially saving tens of thousands of lives. In addition, generators in the dam will transform the power of the river’s water into electricity, providing much-needed energy to keep China’s economy thriving. China claims the dam will generate the electricity of 15 power plants—enough to pay for half of the project’s cost—and will reduce the country’s annual coal usage by 50 million metric tons, therefore diminishing a major source of air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. 57,58,59

To complete the project, the government has reported spending upwards of $25 billion (though the project’s real cost is widely believed to be much higher) and has forced more than 1.3 million people to relocate, sometimes with little or no compensation. 60,61 In areas like Wanxian Prefecture, the new reservoir will submerge rich farmland, and relocated farmers will be forced to farm on higher, less fertile ground. 62 Furthermore, critics say the slowed river water will allow pollution to gather and contribute to the spread of disease. The government denies these claims and says that water quality will actually improve. 63

China is also undertaking another massive water project called the South-North water diversion, where China intends to engineer three new waterways to carry water from China’s wet south to its dry north. This project began in 2002 and is projected to cost $60 billion (though it is already over budget). More than 200,000 people will be relocated. 64 The relocations are likely to encourage people to destroy forests for new land, therefore accelerating soil erosion. 65 Still, perhaps the water diversion is necessary. As one Chinese scientist said, “Without water in northern China, people can’t survive. And the economic development that has been going on cannot continue.” 66 Projects like the South-North water diversion and the Three Gorges Dam have both costs and benefits. The important question is how to weigh their potential economic, social, and environmental effects against each other.

Suggested Resources

Worldwatch Institute: Wikipedia: Elizabeth Economy, “The Lessons of Harbin,” Time.com, 27 November 2005, [15 November 2006]. Lester R. Brown, Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006).

26 Zijun Li, “Expert: Half of Chinese Cities Have Polluted Groundwater,” Worldwatch Institute, 6 December 2005, [7 September 2006]. 27 “In Deep,” Economist, 18 August 2001, 31. 28 Zijun Li, “As Flood Season Arrives, China Combats ‘Drought and Flood’ Climate,” Worldwatch Institute, 6 June 2006, [10 July 2006]. 29 “Cities Guide: Beijing – News This Month: Nor Any Drop to Drink,” Economist.com, 2 June 2006. 30 World Meteorological Organization, “WMO Statement on the Status of the Global Climate in 1998,” [1 December 2006]. 31 “Stopping the Yangzi’s Flow,” Economist, 2 August 1997, 31–32. 32 Lester R. Brown, “Falling Water Tables in China May Soon Raise Food Prices Everywhere,” Earth Policy Institute, 2 May 2000, [14 November 2006]. 33 Jim Yardley, “A Troubled River Mirrors China’s Path to Modernity,” New York Times, 19 November 2006. 34 Lester R. Brown, Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006), 44. 35 Brown, “Falling Water Tables.” 36 Brown, Plan B 2.0, 52. 37 Zijun Li, “China Issues New Regulation on Water Management, Sets Fees for Usage,” Worldwatch Institute, 14 March 2006, [7 September 2006]. 38 Zijun Li, “China’s Rivers: Frontlines for Chemical Wastes,” Worldwatch Institute, 23 February 2006, [7 September 2006]. 39 Li, “Polluted Groundwater.” 40 Zijun Li, “Acid Rain Affects One-Third of China; Main Pollutants Are Sulfur Dioxide and Particulate Matter,” Worldwatch Institute, 30 August 2006, [8 November 2006]. 41 Reuters, “Yangtze River ‘Cancerous’ with Pollution,” 30 May 2006, [30 May 2006]. 42 Li, “China’s Rivers.” 43 Yardley, “A Troubled River.” 44 Yingling Liu, “Human Activities Contribute to Drying Up of Major River Headwaters,” Worldwatch Institute, 19 October 2005, [1 November 2006]. 45 Brown, Plan B 2.0, 53–55. 46 Ibid., 42. 47 Zijun Li, “Soil Quality Deteriorating in China, Threatening Public Health and Ecosystems,” Worldwatch Institute, 27 July 2006, [1 November 2006]. 48 Ke Zhang, “Group Monitors China’s Water Polluters Using Online Mapping,” Worldwatch Institute, 26 September 2006, [1 November 2006]. 49 Yingling Liu, “Harbin Resumes Water Supply,” Worldwatch Institute, 30 November 2005, [7 September 2006]. 50 Li, “China’s Rivers.” 51 Jim Yardley, “Rules Ignored, Toxic Sludge Sinks Chinese Village,” New York Times, 4 September 2006. 52 Elizabeth Economy, “The Lessons of Harbin,” Time.com, 27 November 2005, [15 November 2006]. 53 Li, “As Flood Season Arrives.” 54 “Stopping the Yangzi’s Flow.” 55 Ibid. 56 Stan Grant, “Great Wall Nears End at Three Gorges,” CNN.com, 18 May 2006, [1 August 2006]. 57 Ibid. 58 “Stopping the Yangzi’s Flow.” 59 “A Terrible Beauty Is Born,” Economist, 27 May 2006, 39. 60 Grant. 61 “The Great Flood Begins,” Economist, 7 June 2003, 34–35. 62 “Stopping the Yangzi’s Flow.” 63 Grant. 64 “China’s Massive South-North Water Diversion Project Facing Money Woes,” U.S. Water News Online, December 2004, [20 October 2006]. 65 “In Deep.” 66 Yardley, “A Troubled River.”

A business journal from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania

China’s Water Crisis: A Floodgate for Other Potential Problems

June 7, 2006 • 13 min read.

China is facing a water crisis that one senior official has described as “more severe and urgent than any other country in the world.” The problem is the result of rapid economic expansion, mismanagement of water resources, pollution, and drought. Experts say that a peak water shortage will occur in 2030, when the population rises to 1.6 billion, which will see supply fall to just 1,760 tons per person - a level the UN defines as the "threshold of concern." Meanwhile, the quality of the existing supply continues to deteriorate. Some 70% of the country’s lakes and rivers are polluted, and the two largest waterways, the Yellow and Yangzi rivers, are in danger of dying. The crisis is affecting the health of millions of people and is becoming a bottleneck to economic development. Experts say that public awareness is growing and that progress is now being made in dealing with the challenge. However, a major effort will still be needed to avert a catastrophe.

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Published: 16 February 2011

China's water crisis needs more than words

Chaoqing Yu

Nature volume 470 , page 307 ( 2011 ) Cite this article

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A new water strategy from the Chinese government is a step in the right direction, says Chaoqing Yu. But it will be difficult to put into practice.

Late last month, the Chinese government announced that it will invest four trillion renminbi (US$600 billion) over the next ten years to protect and improve access to water. The policy was spelt out in this year's No 1 Document — the central government's first policy document of the year, setting the top priorities — released on 29 January, and comes as a severe and continuing drought in northern China threatens crops of winter wheat.

The Chinese government is right to highlight sustainable use of water resources as critical for China's food, economic, ecological and even national security. Among the measures it proposes are control of total water consumption, improved irrigation efficiency, restricted groundwater pumping, reduced water pollution and guaranteed funds for water-conservancy projects. Such a national policy could go a long way to help secure and protect China's water. How to put the policy into practice, however, remains challenging.

Since the 1950s, China has constructed 86,000 reservoirs, drilled more than four million wells, and developed 58 million hectares of irrigated land, which generates 70% of the country's total grain production. Efforts to conserve water have lagged far behind. The largest threat to sustainable water supplies in China is a growing geographical mismatch between agricultural development and water resources. The centre of grain production in China has moved from the humid south to the water-scarce north over the past 30 years, as southern cropland is built on and more land is irrigated further north. As the north has become drier, increased food production there has largely relied on unsustainable overuse of local water resources, especially groundwater. Wasteful irrigation infrastructure, poorly managed water use, as well as fast industrialization and urbanization, have led to serious depletion of groundwater aquifers, loss of natural habitats and water pollution.

To tackle water issues in China, one problem that must be addressed is the scattering of authority across different agencies. At present, major rivers are managed by the Ministry of Water Resources, whereas local governments control smaller water courses. Water supply, farmland irrigation, groundwater, water pollution and weather forecasting are separately administrated by, respectively, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Land and Resources, the Ministry of Environmental Protection, and the State Meteorological Administration.

China needs to build an integrated network to monitor surface and groundwater. ,

Data on precipitation, river runoff, groundwater, land use, pollution and water use are not shared between governmental agencies, or made accessible to the public. It will be difficult to implement the holistic policy laid out in the No 1 Document without breaking down these bureaucratic barriers.

As a starting point, China needs to build an integrated network to monitor surface and groundwater, and use it to assess and set water policies through an integrated water-resource management system. And for this to happen, China needs a law that sets out clear policies on data sharing, and penalties for those who do not comply.

Other legislation is needed too. A water law introduced in 1988, and amended in 2002, is too vague to apply in practice, and there remains confusion over water rights of individuals, such as whether to grant them based on land ownership or use.

As political attention to water increases, a new, fair water law, based on transparent decisions, is essential to protect citizens' rights and prevent corruption. Low-income farmers will suffer greatly if water prices rise. To protect them, and so food supplies, China must keep irrigation costs low. Clear measures will also be needed to better match food production with water availability. Without regulation to increase food production in the south, it will be difficult to maintain food security, even if water-use efficiency is improved in the north.

Some of the areas identified in the document need more attention. Despite increasing concern about the effects of climate change on the availability and suitability of water resources, the document does not specifically define adaption to climate impacts. It is also vague on how the departments of water resources and environment protection should cooperate on planned new limits on water pollutants. Ecological water use is mentioned, but the document does not outline the specific measures that will be needed to protect the water supply of ecosystems against conflicting demands of economic activity. The role of ecosystems in water availability must be explicitly accounted for.

How will the money be raised to deliver the government's promises on water? The document demands that local governments reserve 10% of the annual income (currently 70 billion renminbi) from land sales for real-estate development to be used for water projects. However, it is not clear whether this money would be better held by local governments or allocated by Beijing.

The current drought shows how urgent the problem of sustainable water use and supply is for China. Although many of the policies and measures in the No 1 Document are not new and still need more work, the high priority the government has placed on sustainable water use is extremely welcome.

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Chaoqing Yu is associate professor in the Center for Earth System Science and the Institute for Global Change Studies, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. Colleagues Peng Gong and Yongyuan Yin also contributed. e-mail: [email protected]

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Frequently Asked Questions

The China water crisis is serious and could impact economies around the world.

Here is a summary of our key findings.

How serious is China’s water crisis?

China has 20% of the world’s population but only 7% of the world’s freshwater resources. Even worse, North China has 20% of the nation’s freshwater, yet accounts for over 60% of China’s agricultural land and 40% of its population.

To combat a dry climate in the North, China has been drawing on groundwater reserves, and transferring water from South China to North China. Groundwater depletion is so significant that more than 50 cities in China are seeing land subsidence (sinking or settling of the land).

Water availability is critical for electricity production. Coal generation and hydroelectric dams account for more than 75% of China’s electricity output, and inadequate water levels are a key reason for widespread power outages in China this past year.

Data above from Chinadialogue.net .

Why does this matter to me?

Chinese firms produce a staggering portion of what Americans buy, like 40% of the clothing and 70% of the shoes sold in the US . For example, Chinese suppliers produce more than 70% of Walmart’s store merchandise.

China’s power shortfalls are directly impacting Chinese manufacturers, with many companies forced to shut production two or more days out of the week. This is a major reason why US retailers are struggling to keep products on store shelves.

China is also a critical manufacturing hub for technology companies like Apple; it’s worth noting that a modern cellphone requires 3000 gallons of water to produce.

I want to learn more

Click here.

Why else does this matter to me?

This issue could significantly increase food prices both in the US and abroad. China imports more than $100 billion in food products each year . A long-term water shortage would likely force China to increase its food imports, putting more pressure on global agricultural supply chains. There is evidence to suggest that China’s grain reserves are in worse shape than official statistics suggest.

Food security is a major reason why Chinese entities are acquiring overseas assets. Smithfield Farms, the largest pork producer in the United States, is now owned by the largest pork processor in China (and the world), WH Holdings. Included in the purchase of Smithfield was 146,000 acres of US farmland spread across nine states .

This extends beyond the US; Syngenta, a Swiss-based producer of crop seeds and agrichemicals, was acquired by China National Chemical Corporation in 2015.

When can I stop caring about this?

Potentially not for a very, very long time.

China is facing a twin water/power crisis, with no easy solution for either.

As water availability dwindles, it becomes difficult for China to operate coal, hydro, or nuclear generation. Wind and solar power do not require significant water resources, but also do NOT provide the kind of dependable power that China’s manufacturers need to maintain production (wind/solar output varies tremendously over the course of a year).

It’s extremely challenging for China to resolve its power shortages without access to more water, or technologies to make wind/solar power more reliable.

Desalination requires significant amounts of electric power, which is already in short supply in China. In addition, transporting desalinated water thousands of miles inland to the interior of China is not economically viable for agriculture or industry.

How long have Chinese authorities known about this problem?

Former Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao once observed that water shortages threaten “the survival of the Chinese nation.” And in 2005, the Minister of Water Resources remarked to journalists of the need to “ fight for every drop of water or die ”.

For example, planning officials have tried to cap the population of Beijing due to inadequate local water resources. Studies have suggested that Beijing’s natural population should be no more than 10 million people based on local water resources; Beijing’s current population is over 20 million.

China has also taken steps to secure water that may be impacting neighboring countries. China’s government has announced plans to use weather modification (cloud seeding) to increase precipitation across more than 50% of its landmass by 2025. In addition, countries downstream of international rivers passing through China are seeing major changes in normal waters flows due to new dams operating upstream.

Why hasn’t China taken more substantive steps?

Politics and economics.

It is politically difficult in China for local officials to sacrifice economic growth to conserve water, even when necessary. Conserving water involves painful decisions like relocating manufacturing, or raising water prices to end users. This would likely result in higher unemployment and lower disposable income in affected regions.

In recent years, China has taken modest steps to increase water prices to end users, but water prices remain well below other developed countries. This encourages inefficient usage by both agriculture and industry.

What can China do to resolve this problem?

Transparency and cooperation.

Greater transparency regarding water availability is crucial, at the both the national and provincial level. Even well-intentioned policies by China’s Central government to reduce water consumption may be constrained by local decision making.

Agriculture, power generation, and industry account for the vast majority of China’s water consumption; international cooperation on developing technologies to increase water efficiency would make a huge impact on this issue over the long term.

China is not alone in facing water stress, with nearly half the world’s population already struggling with water scarcity at least one month out of the year . Solutions for China’s water shortage are needed all over the world- including the USA.

Are the Chinese people to blame for this?

No- Americans on average consume 3x more water per person than a citizen of China. A more sustainable future starts with all of us working on solutions, not pointing fingers.

There is no shortage of tension in current relations between China, the US, and the rest of the world. De-escalation and cooperation are key to resolving China’s water crisis.

Science News by AGU

Modeling Beijing’s Water Crisis

Source: Geophysical Research Letters

According to legend, China was born in a huge flood —but today the northern part of the country is starved for water . Beijing, China’s capital city, is located in this arid region, and the megacity supports its 22 million residents with increasingly limited water sources. Only 100 cubic meters is available per person per year—anything less than 1,000 cubic meters per capita annually is considered “ water scarce ” by United Nations standards.

Beijing has come to rely more and more on groundwater, which currently makes up more than 70% of its total water supply. Because the population of the city is expected to rocket to more than 50 million by 2050, management of this subterranean resource is both critical and complex.

In a new study, Hyndman et al . provide a novel glimpse into the dynamics of the groundwater system beneath the megacity. The researchers created a model that takes into account Beijing’s developing landscape and found that urbanization has increased the recharge of groundwater.

A new study looks at how land use changes affect water supplies for Beijing’s booming population

The key factor is land use change. Urban development has edged large water consumers like agriculture and industry out of Beijing’s municipality. An urban landscape not only uses less water than agriculture but also loses less to evapotranspiration, the phenomenon that occurs when water evaporates from the soil or is drawn up from the ground by plants and transpired from their leaves.

The research team’s model of Beijing’s water system provides a better fit to observations than previous groundwater models. It integrates data on the water used by plants in different stages of growth, hydrology and topography, population growth, water use, temperature and precipitation, and other factors that influence groundwater recharge. Essentially, the researchers modeled the interactions between human water use and environmental factors to create a holistic picture of the real-world water system.

The researchers hope that their model, which may be applied to other groundwater systems around the globe, will inform policy makers about the long-term effects of policy decisions.

Although urbanization has improved Beijing’s groundwater recovery, it has not solved the megacity’s water woes. The greater recovery rate still does not ensure enough water to meet demand or even offset the steady decline of groundwater in the area. Further, runoff from city surfaces often contributes to the pollutants already troubling China’s water sources .

The city is desperately striving to meet its water demands through various methods, including improvement of wastewater treatment and engineering projects to divert water from the Yangtze River in the southern part of the country. As efforts to solve the water crisis continue, this model is a useful tool to better understand water conditions and changes in Beijing. ( Geophysical Research Letters, https://doi.org/10.1002/2017GL074429 , 2017)

—Elizabeth Thompson, Staff Writer

Thompson, E. (2017), Modeling Beijing’s water crisis, Eos, 98 , https://doi.org/10.1029/2017EO085211 . Published on 25 October 2017.

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China’s Cities Are Sinking Below Sea Level, Study Finds

Development and groundwater pumping are causing land subsidence and heightening the risks of sea level rise.

A person in a red suit and hat stands in a trench in an empty lot with skyscrapers in the background.

By Delger Erdenesanaa

As China’s cities grow, they are also sinking.

An estimated 16 percent of the country’s major cities are losing more than 10 millimeters of elevation per year and nearly half are losing more than 3 millimeters per year, according to a new study published in the journal Science .

These amounts may seem small, but they accumulate quickly. In 100 years, a quarter of China’s urban coastal land could sit below sea level because of a combination of subsidence and sea level rise, according to the study.

“It’s a national problem,” said Robert Nicholls, a climate scientist and civil engineer at the University of East Anglia who reviewed the paper. Dr. Nicholls added that, to his knowledge, this study is the first to measure subsidence across many urban areas at once using state-of-the-art radar data from satellites.

Subsidence in these cities is caused in part by the sheer weight of buildings and infrastructure, the study found. Pumping water from aquifers underneath the cities also plays a role, as do oil drilling and coal mining, all activities that leave empty space underground where soil and rocks can compact or collapse.

Beijing is among the places in the country sinking the fastest. So is nearby Tianjin, where last year thousands of residents were evacuated from high-rise apartment buildings after the streets outside suddenly split apart. Within these cities, sinking is uneven. When pieces of land next to each other subside at different rates, whatever is built on top of that land is at risk of damage.

Other countries, including the United States , have similar problems.

“Land subsidence is an overlooked problem that almost exists everywhere,” said Manoochehr Shirzaei, a geophysicist at Virginia Tech who has studied subsidence in American coastal cities using similar methods. Dr. Shirzaei also reviewed the new study on Chinese cities by Zurui Ao of South China Normal University, Xiaomei Hu and Shengli Tao of Peking University, and their colleagues.

“I believe the majority of the adaptation strategies that we have, and resiliency plans to combat climate change, are inaccurate, just because they did not include land subsidence,” he said. “It hasn’t been studied the way, for example, sea level rise has been studied.”

The new study was based on satellite radar measurements of how much the ground surface in 82 major cities, accounting for three-quarters of China’s urban population, moved up or down between 2015 and 2022. The researchers compared these measurements to data on potential contributing factors, like the weight of buildings in these cities and changing groundwater levels underneath them.

The researchers also combined their subsidence measurements with projections of sea level rise to figure out which cities might end up below sea level. One caveat with these findings is that they assumed a constant rate of subsidence over the next 100 years, but these rates can change along with human activity.

About 6 percent of land in China’s coastal cities currently has a relative elevation below sea level. If the global average sea level rises by 0.87 meters, or a little less than 3 feet, by 2120 (the higher of two commonly used scenarios considered by the researchers) that proportion could rise to 26 percent, this study found.

Being below sea level doesn’t mean a city is automatically doomed. Much of the Netherlands is below sea level and sinking, but the country has been extensively engineered to prevent flooding in places and to accommodate it in others .

The key to minimizing damage is limiting groundwater extraction, the researchers wrote. Shanghai is already taking this approach and is sinking more slowly than other Chinese cities. In Japan, groundwater management over the years has proved successful at stabilizing subsidence in Tokyo and Osaka.

Some places are even combating subsidence by injecting water into depleted aquifers in a process called managed recharge.

It’s difficult to stop subsidence entirely, Dr. Nicholls said. “You’ve got to live with what’s left.” Mainly, he said, this means adapting to sea level rise in coastal areas; not just the sea level rise caused by climate change, but also the effects of sinking land.

Delger Erdenesanaa is a reporter covering climate and the environment and a member of the 2023-24 Times Fellowship class, a program for journalists early in their careers. More about Delger Erdenesanaa

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Nearly half of China's major cities are sinking, researchers say

Members of the Peoples Armed Police wade through receding floodwaters as they help to retrieve goods from a building in Zhuozhou, China

SINGAPORE — Nearly half of China ’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence , putting millions of people at risk of flooding especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released on Friday.

The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45% of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3 millimeters per year, with 16% at more than 10 mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables but also the sheer weight of the built environment.

With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion of subsiding land in China could therefore translate into a substantial threat to urban life,” said the team of researchers led by Ao Zurui of the South China Normal University.

Subsidence already costs China more than 7.5 billion yuan ($1.04 billion) in annual losses, and within the next century, nearly a quarter of coastal land could actually be lower than sea levels, putting hundreds of millions of people at an even greater risk of inundation.

“It really brings home that this is for China a national problem and not a problem in just one or two places,” said Robert Nicholls at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia. “And it is a microcosm of what is happening around the rest of the world.”

The northern city of Tianjin, home to more than 15 million people, was identified as one of the worst-hit. Last year, 3,000 residents were evacuated after a “sudden geological disaster” that investigators blamed on water depletion as well as the construction of geothermal wells.

Many of China’s old coal districts have also suffered as a result of overmining, with authorities often forced to inject concrete into the crumbling shafts to reinforce land.

The problem is not limited to China. A separate study published in February said around 2.4 million square miles of land across the globe was at risk. Among the worst-hit countries is Indonesia, with large parts of the capital, Jakarta, now below sea level.

Nicholls said vulnerable cities could learn lessons from Tokyo, which sank by about 16 feet until it banned groundwater extraction in the 1970s.

“Subsidence mitigation should be looked at very seriously, but you can’t stop all of it so you are talking about adaptation and building dykes,” he added.

Of the 44 major coastal cities suffering from the problem, 30 were in Asia, according to a 2022 Singapore study.

“It is a problem of urbanization and population growth — larger population density, more water extracted, (and) more subsidence,” said Matt Wei, a geophysics expert at the University of Rhode Island.

Water Crisis Essay

In this water crisis essay, we had describe about water crisis in details.

Water is the basic requirement for the survival and promotion of humans, animals, birds and vegetation.

Environmental pollution is a major cause of ‘water crisis’ as a result the underground layer increases rapidly.

In 1951, the per capita water availability was about 5177 cubic meters, this has now come down to around 1545 in 2011 (Source: Water Resources Division, TERI).

What is Water Crisis?

The lack of available water resources to meet the demands of water use within a region is called ‘water crisis’.

Around 2.8 billion people living in all continents of the world are affected by water crisis at least one month each year, over 1.2 billion people do not have access to clean water for drinking.

Global Scenario of Water Crisis:

Due to increasing demand for water resources, climate change and population explosion, there is a decrease in water availability.

It is estimated that in the Middle East region of Asia, most of North Africa, Pakistan, Turkey, Afghanistan and Spain, countries are expected to have water stress situation by 2040.

Along with this, many other countries including India, China, Southern Africa, USA and Australia may also face high water stress.

Status of Water Crisis in India – Water Crisis Essay:

In India, 330 million people or nearly a quarter of the country’s population are affected by severe drought due to two consecutive years of weak monsoon.

About 50% of the regions of India are experiencing drought like conditions, particularly in the western and southern states, with severe water crisis.

According to the Composite Water Management Index report released in 2018 by the NITI Aayog , 21 major cities of the country (Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad) and about 100 million people living in these cities are facing the severe problem of water crisis.

12% of India’s population is already living under ‘Day Zero’ conditions.

Day Zero: In order to attract the attention of all people to limit and manage water consumption in the city of Cape Town, the idea of Day Zero was introduced so as to increase management and awareness of limiting water use.

Causes of Water Crisis in India:

The problems of water crisis in India are mainly indicated in the southern and northwestern parts, the geographical location of these areas that it receives less rainfall, the southwest monsoon does not receive rainfall on the Chennai coast.

Similarly, by reaching the monsoon in the northwest, it becomes weak due to which the amount of rainfall also decreases.

Monsoon uncertainty in India is also a major cause of water crisis. In recent years, due to the impact of El-Nino, rainfall has decreased, due to which a situation of water crisis has arisen.

The agricultural ecology of India is favorable for crops that require more water for production, such as rice, wheat, sugarcane, jute and cotton etc.

The problem of water crisis is particularly prevalent in agricultural areas having these crops, the state of water crisis has arisen due to the strengthening of agriculture in Haryana and Punjab.

Serious efforts are not made to reuse water resources in Indian cities that is why the problem of water crisis in urban areas has reached a worrying situation.

Instead of reusing most of the water in cities, they are directly discharged into a river.

There is a lack of awareness among people about water conservation, the misuse of water is constantly increasing; Lawn, washing of cart, leaving the bottle open at the time of water use, etc.

Efforts to Conserve Water:

Under the Sustainable Development Goal, water availability and sustainable management is to be ensured for all people by the year 2030, the following efforts for water conservation are being made to meet this goal as follows:

At present, the use of low water crops is being encouraged to reduce the excessive use of water due to the intensification of agriculture.

In the Second Green Revolution, emphasis is being placed on low water intensity crops.

Efforts are being made to conserve water through dams, the government is also taking help from the World Bank for dam repair and reconstruction.

Guidelines have been issued by the government for construction of water tanks under the water supply program during the construction of buildings in the cities.

The NITI Aayog has released the overall water management index to inspire the effective use of water in states and union territories.

Precautions to avoid Water Crisis:

High-water crops such as wheat, rice, etc. should be transferred from coarse grains because about one-third of the water can be saved using these crops.

Also, the nutritional level of coarse cereals is also high, the use of low-water crops should be increased in areas with less rainfall.

In recent years, such efforts have been made by the Government of Tamil Nadu, water consumption efficiency should be increased, as it is still less than 30% in the best cases.

Public awareness is essential for water conservation because problem of water crisis has risen, however in some areas of America with less water availability than in countries like India.

RELATED ESSAYS:

SAVE WATER ESSAY | WATER POLLUTION ESSAY | WATER CONSERVATION ESSAY

Conclusion for Water Crisis Essay:

Water is an important natural resource as it maintains all living beings on the earth.

We use it for drinking and cooking, bathing and cleaning, surprisingly less than one percent of the total water supply is potable, but water pollution and misuse of water crisis lead to the ‘water crisis’.

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Philippines summons China envoy over water cannon attack in South China Sea

The Philippines has protested against China’s ‘dangerous manoeuvres’ 20 times this year as tensions escalate over the disputed shoal.

A Chinese coastguard ship firing water cannon at a Philippines coast guard ship

The Philippines has summoned a Chinese diplomat, accusing Beijing of “harassment” and “dangerous manoeuvres” after its use of water cannon against two Philippine vessels during a patrol in the South China Sea.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs called in China’s deputy chief of mission Zhou Zhiyong on Thursday, two days after the incident at a disputed shoal that left a Philippine coastguard vessel and another government boat damaged.

Keep reading

Philippines and china in new confrontation at scarborough shoal, china and us should be ‘partners, not rivals’, xi tells blinken, marcos jr treads fine line with china as philippines deepens us, japan ties, japan, philippines, us rebuke china over ‘dangerous’ south china sea moves.

It was the 20th protest by the Philippines against the conduct of China’s coastguard and fishing vessels this year, the ministry said. It has made 153 complaints over the past two years.

“The Philippines protested the harassment, ramming, swarming, shadowing and blocking, dangerous manoeuvres, use of water cannons, and other aggressive actions of [the] China Coast Guard and Chinese maritime militia,” the ministry said in a statement.

China seized Scarborough Shoal from the Philippines in 2012 after a months-long standoff.

The Philippines said the pressure in Tuesday’s water cannon incident was far more powerful than anything previously used, and that it tore or bent metal sections and equipment on the Philippine vessels.

Tensions have escalated over the Scarborough Shoal recently as the Philippines takes a more assertive approach in disputed areas while strengthening alliances with the United States and Japan.

A traditional fishing ground used by several countries and close to major shipping lanes, the shoal lies about 220km (137 miles) off the coast of the Philippines and within its exclusive economic zone (EEZ). Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), an EEZ extends some 200 nautical miles (about 370km) from a country’s coast.

The triangular grouping of reefs and rocks is nearly 900 kilometres (559 miles) from the island of Hainan, the nearest major Chinese land mass.

China’s embassy in Manila claimed on Wednesday Scarborough Shoal had always been China’s territory and urged the Philippines to cease infringements and provocations and not “challenge China’s resolve to defend our sovereignty”.

China claims almost the entire South China Sea, brushing off rival claims from other countries, including the Philippines, and an international ruling that its assertions have no legal basis.

Brunei, Malaysia and Vietnam also claim the parts of the sea around their coasts.

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China’s Worsening Water Crisis And Efforts To Mitigate It
Essay on water crisis and its solution
China's Water Crisis by Ma Jun
Essays on How to Solve Water Pollution Problems in China. Free essay
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COMMENTS

How China's Water Challenges Could Lead to a Global Food and Supply
Note: This report is based on Gabriel Collins and Gopal Reddy's "China's Growing Water Crisis," published in Foreign Affairs on August 23, 2022.. Following a record-breaking drought this summer, China is on the brink of a water catastrophe that could have devastating consequences for global food security, energy markets and supply chains.
China's Growing Water Crisis
China is on the brink of a water catastrophe. A multiyear drought could push the country into an outright water crisis. Such an outcome would not only have a significant effect on China's grain and electricity production; it could also induce global food and industrial materials shortages on a far greater scale than those wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine.
How China Is Responding to Its Water Woes
In 2020, also, the water levels in southern China, a region already prone to flooding, became "dangerously high," with 443 rivers throughout the country flooding, of which 33 rivers rose to ...
China's Water Challenges: National and Global Implications
China's environmental challenges have received wide attention in recent years. A variety of disturbing images and stories from media outlets have fueled a pervasive image of China as an environmental wasteland, while expanding scholarship has inventoried China's air, water, and land problems. Reasonable observers can disagree on the prescriptive responses necessary to address such ...
Water Issues in China
In terms of health, China's water crisis has had serious consequences. About 300 million people in China—a quarter of its population (or a number equivalent to the entire U.S. population)—drink contaminated water every day. Almost two-thirds of these people—190 million—fall ill. Children are suffering, too, with more than 30,000 dying ...
PDF Water Scarcity in China: Left out to Dry?
water resources as well as reduced water quality, both of which critically impacts upon its society and environment. The three main factors contributing to China's water scarcity are (1) uneven spatial distribution of water resources; (2) rapid economic development and urbanization; and (3) poor water resource management.
Issue Brief: Water Resource Issues, Policy and Politics in China
This Issue Brief describes the root causes of China's water resource challenge, assesses the Chinese government's policy response to date, and finally offers recommendations to increase the ...
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China is on the brink of a water catastrophe. A multiyear drought could push the country into an outright water crisis. Such an outcome would not only have a significant effect on China's grain and electricity production; it could also induce global food and industrial materials shortages on a far greater scale than those wrought by the COVID ...
China's Water Crisis: A Floodgate for Other Potential Problems
June 7, 2006 • 13 min read. China is facing a water crisis that one senior official has described as "more severe and urgent than any other country in the world.". The problem is the result ...
Meeting China's Water Shortage Crisis: Current Practices and Challenges
water supply and trends in total water withdrawal and population in China. Water use has increased steadily with population from 1980 to 2006. The population in China is expected to peak in 2030, when the annual per capita renewable freshwater availability will drop to 1760 m3sonly ∼4% higher than the water stress threshold of 1700 m3/year
China's Economy and the Water Crisis—A Fresh Take
Almost 20% of China's water consumption goes to the mining, processing, and consumption of coal. Coal consumption has tripled since 2000, and Chinese analysts project another 30% increase by ...
China Water Crisis: Causes and Consequences
China's water scarcity is a multifaceted challenge with profound economic, social, environmental, and global implications. It threatens the country's economic growth by impacting crucial sectors such as agriculture and manufacturing. Socially, it can exacerbate regional disparities, contribute to rural-urban divides, and even lead to social unrest.
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Credit: Planet Labs inc. In January 2022, China released a plan to improve the country's capability to safeguard its water security during the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-2025). The plan ...
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Scarcity of water even complicates China's hold over the great territorial prize of the Xi era, the island of Taiwan. Seven years after being retaken in the short, brutal war of 2043, after an ...
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Policy. A new water strategy from the Chinese government is a step in the right direction, says Chaoqing Yu. But it will be difficult to put into practice. Late last month, the Chinese government ...
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Some parts of China (Fig. 1 a) are generally cited as hot spots of groundwater depletion within the global water crisis (Zheng et al., 2011).Northern and northwestern China have substantially an arid to semi-arid climate (precipitation: 25 to 600 mm/yr) and large populated regions underlain by multilayer aquifers that are exploited to support agricultural, industrial, and municipal activities.
China Water Crisis FAQ
How serious is China's water crisis? lucian.tucker 2021-10-31T16:01:42-04:00. How serious is China's water crisis? Severe. China has 20% of the world's population but only 7% of the world's freshwater resources. Even worse, North China has 20% of the nation's freshwater, yet accounts for over 60% of China's agricultural land and 40% ...
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According to legend, China was born in a huge flood—but today the northern part of the country is starved for water. Beijing, China's capital city, is located in this arid region, and the ...
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Water shortages are therefore a critical limitation for food production in China (Du et al., 2014) and a great challenge for achieving SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation), which aims to address water scarcity, poor water quality, and inadequate sanitation to ensure the availability and sustainability of water and sanitation for all sectors.
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China's Cities Are Sinking Below Sea Level, Study Finds
As China's cities grow, they are also sinking. An estimated 16 percent of the country's major cities are losing more than 10 millimeters of elevation per year and nearly half are losing more ...
Nearly half of China's major cities are sinking, researchers say
Subsidence already costs China more than 7.5 billion yuan ($1.04 billion) in annual losses, and within the next century, nearly a quarter of coastal land could actually be lower than sea levels ...
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China Is Turning Its Water-Scarcity Crisis into a Weapon. A woman stands next to the Mekong River bordering Thailand and Laos in Nong Khai, Thailand, October 29, 2019. (Soe Zeya Tun/Reuters ...
Water Crisis Essay for Students
In this water crisis essay, we had describe about water crisis in details. Water is the basic requirement for the survival and promotion of humans, animals, birds and vegetation. Environmental pollution is a major cause of 'water crisis' as a result the underground layer increases rapidly. In 1951, the per capita water availability was ...
Philippines summons China envoy over water cannon attack in South China
The Philippines protests China's 'dangerous manoeuvres' 20th time this year, as tensions escalate over disputed shoal.