china water crisis essay

• All Articles
• Books & Reviews
• Anthologies
• Audio Content
• Author Directory
• This Day in History
• War in Ukraine
• Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
• Artificial Intelligence
• Climate Change
• Biden Administration
• Geopolitics
• Benjamin Netanyahu
• Vladimir Putin
• Volodymyr Zelensky
• Nationalism
• Authoritarianism
• Propaganda & Disinformation
• West Africa
• North Korea
• Middle East
• United States
• View All Regions

Article Types

• Capsule Reviews
• Review Essays
• Ask the Experts
• Reading Lists
• Newsletters
• Customer Service
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Subscriber Resources
• Group Subscriptions
• Gift a Subscription

China’s Growing Water Crisis

A chinese drought would be a global catastrophe, by gabriel collins and gopal reddy.

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. Given the country’s overriding importance to the global economy, potential water-driven disruptions beginning in China would rapidly reverberate through food, energy, and materials markets around the world and create economic and political turbulence for years to come.

Unlike other commodities, water does not have any viable substitutes. It is essential for growing food, generating energy, and sustaining humanity. For China, water has also been crucial to the country’s rapid development: currently, China consumes ten billion barrels of water per day—about 700 times its daily oil consumption. Four decades of explosive economic growth, combined with food security policies that aim at national self-sufficiency, have pushed northern China’s water system beyond a sustainable level, and they threaten to do the same in parts of southern China as well. As of 2020, the per capita available water supply around the North China Plain was 253 cubic meters or nearly 50 percent below the UN definition of acute water scarcity. Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, and other major cities are at similar—or lower—levels. So scarce are Hong Kong’s freshwater resources that the city has for decades used seawater to flush toilets. For reference, as of 2019, even severely water-stressed Egypt had per capita freshwater resources of 570 cubic meters per capita, and it does not have to support a large manufacturing base like China’s.

Moreover, a significant portion of China’s water supply is not fit for human consumption. A 2018 analysis of surface water by China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment found that although the quality had improved from previous years, 19 percent was still classified as unfit for human consumption and roughly seven percent 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 percent being deemed unfit for human consumption and 16 percent 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. Meanwhile, farm and industrial chemicals continue to contaminate the country’s groundwater, setting the stage for potentially decades of additional water supply impairments. Data from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization indicate that China uses nearly two and a half times as much fertilizer and four times as much pesticide as the United States does despite having 25 percent less arable land.

For decades, Beijing has generally chosen to conceal the full extent of China’s environmental problems to limit potential public backlash and to avoid questions about the competence and capacity of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). This lack of transparency suggests that an escalation to acute water distress could be far closer than most outside observers realize— increasing the chances that the world will be ill prepared for such a calamity.

NORTHERN CRISIS

The overpumping of aquifers under the Northern China Plain is a core driver of China’s looming water crisis. According to data from NASA GRACE satellites, the North China Plain’s groundwater reserves are even more overdrawn than those of the Ogallala Aquifer under the Great Plains of the United States, one of the world’s most imperiled critical agricultural water sources. These data further suggest that the most populous portion of China north of the Yangtze River—an area from eastern Sichuan to southern Jilin that is home to more than a billion people—has for much of the past 15 years seen steady declines in the amount of water in the region’s lakes, rivers, and aquifers.

In parts of North China, groundwater levels have declined by a meter per year, causing naturally occurring underground water storage aquifers to collapse, which has triggered land subsidence and compromised the aquifers’ potential for future recharge. Recognizing the urgency of the problem, China’s government in 2003 launched the $60 billion South-to-North Water Transfer Project, which draws water from tributaries of the Yangtze River to replenish the dry north. To boost rainfall (and sometimes engineer better weather, for example, for Olympics ceremonies and party anniversary events), China has also deployed aircraft and rockets to lace clouds with silver iodide or liquid nitrogen, a process known as cloud seeding. It has also relocated heavy industry away from the most water-stressed regions and is investing massively in water management infrastructure, with Vice Minister of Water Resources Wei Shanzhong estimating in April 2022 that annual investment in water-related projects could hit $100 billion annually.

Still, these efforts may be insufficient to forestall a crisis. Despite highly innovative programs to improve water availability, some scholars estimate that water supply could fall short of demand by 25 percent by 2030—a situation that would by definition force major adjustments in society. Experiences to date on the North China Plain enhance concern and illustrate the scale of additional needed hydraulic intervention. Despite nearly a decade of importing Yangtze valley water supplies to high-stress areas such as Beijing, large-scale depletion of stored groundwater continues in other nearby areas, such as Hebei and Tianjin.

LESS WATER, LESS FOOD

China’s leadership is keenly aware that famines precipitated by drought helped topple at least five of China’s 17 dynasties. Thus, for centuries, the country’s leaders have emphasized maximizing grain production to ensure food security, a policy that the CCP’s development agenda has continued. The policy has become especially important since the early years of the twenty-first century as strategic competition between China and the United States intensifies . For the past 20 years, Chinese government policy has offered incentives to farmers to maximize production of corn, rice, and wheat to achieve “self-sufficiency” levels (production levels determined as a percentage of consumption) that generally exceed 90 percent. Groundwater extraction played an outsize role in this achievement and transformed the dry North China Plain into the country’s breadbasket. Farms on the North China Plain produce approximately 60 percent of China’s wheat, 45 percent of its corn, 35 percent of its cotton, and 64 percent of its peanuts. The region’s production of more than 80 million tons of wheat is on par with Russia’s annual output, and its nearly 125 million tons of corn is almost three times Ukraine’s prewar production.

But to sustain these harvests, farms and cities are pumping water far faster than nature can replenish it. Satellite data suggest that each year between 2003 and 2010, North China lost an amount of groundwater equal to more than twice what Beijing consumes annually. As groundwater levels fall, many farmers are struggling to find new sources. Some are digging larger, deeper wells, often at great cost; but continual overdraws may render water physically inaccessible regardless of pumpers’ willingness to spend on deeper wells and new pumping technology.

If the North China Plain were to suffer a 33 percent crop loss because of water insufficiency, China would potentially need to compensate by importing approximately 20 percent of the world’s internationally traded corn and 13 percent of its traded wheat. Such a scenario is not out of the realm of possibility. Consider that a drought in early 2022 slashed Argentina’s expected corn crop by 33 percent. Further, if a drought were to curtail rice yields in southern China or Heilongjiang (in China’s fertile Northeast), that could create even larger market shocks given China’s disproportionate share of rice consumption. All three major staple grains are critical for hundreds of millions of lower-income consumers worldwide, with corn as a staple in Latin America, wheat vital in the Middle East and North Africa, and rice essential across Asia.

Although China has stockpiled the world’s largest grain reserves, the country is not immune to a multiyear yield shortfall. This would likely force China’s food traders, including large state-owned enterprises such as COFCO and Sinograin, into global markets on an emergency basis to secure additional supplies. This in turn could trigger food price spikes in high-income countries, while rendering key food items economically inaccessible to hundreds of millions of people in poorer countries. The impacts of this water-driven food shortage could be far worse than the food-related unrest that swept across lower- and middle-income countries in 2007 and 2008 and would drive migration and exacerbate political polarization already present in Europe and the United States.

THE POWER PROBLEM

China’s water problems go well beyond its agricultural sector. China’s energy sector—the world’s largest—also faces significant water risks. Despite major investments in renewable energy, nearly 90 percent of China’s electricity supply still requires extensive water resources, particularly hydro, coal, and even nuclear generation, which needs large and steady water supplies for steam condensers and to cool reactor cores and used fuel rods. (It is worth noting that all Chinese power reactors currently operating or under active construction are sited near the coast and can use seawater for cooling.)

Managing the cascading effects of a shortfall from any given power source is daunting. If China lost 15 percent of its hydropower production in a year because of low water levels behind dams—a plausible scenario based on real-world experiences in Brazil—it would have to increase electricity output by an amount equal to what Egypt generates in a year. In China’s energy system, only coal-fired plants could potentially boost output by hundreds of terawatt-hours on short notice.

Unfortunately, the coal mining and preparation process is often highly water intensive, and if China were compelled to ramp up coal production, it would further strain local groundwater supplies. Moreover, while seawater can be used for cooling in coastal regions, many of China’s coal-fired plants are located inland and rely on rivers, lakes, or groundwater. Power plants could be forced to curtail operations if cooling water runs short or if farmers and cities are given priority access to remaining supplies. Our analysis of approximately 2,000 utility-scale (300 megawatts or larger capacity) Chinese coal-fired power generation units and their known or likely modes of cooling suggests that about 500 gigawatts of capacity —more than the combined coal power capacity of India and the United States—face elevated risks from a prolonged drought.

China’s energy sector—the world’s largest—faces significant water risks.

Reduced river-borne coal transport capacity could also limit electricity production. In the United States’ Ohio and Mississippi River systems, losing even an inch of river level can reduce a barge convoy’s carrying capacity by hundreds of tons. China’s water systems likely suffer from similar limitations. Multiplied over a region with hundreds of coal plants and thousands of waterway miles, lower water levels could rapidly strain coal availability. If plants along some of these waterways needed to increase their electricity output to compensate for hydro output losses elsewhere, there is a real risk that coal could not reach where it was needed in time, and in sufficient quantity, to maintain stable electricity supplies.

China’s power shortfalls would directly affect global supply chains, as industrial facilities account for over 65 percent of electricity use in China. To minimize the immediate human impact of broad, uncontrolled blackouts, party officials would likely have to shut down industrial facilities to ease the grid load—as they did during power shortfalls in 2021.

Blackouts by decree would disrupt a number of key materials supplies. China is by far the world’s largest producer of aluminum, ferro-silicon, lead, manganese, magnesium, zinc, most rare earth metals, and many other specialty metals and materials. Power outages in even a single region can move global markets—as European carmakers discovered in late 2021 when power shortages curtailed magnesium smelter operations in Shaanxi Province, responsible for about 50 percent of global output. As magnesium inventories plummeted, prices spiked to seven times their level at the beginning of the year and European industrial consumers called for government action to ensure supplies.

Sustained water and electricity problems in China could also impede the global transition to clean energy. China produces an overwhelming portion of the polysilicon used for solar cells and the rare earth metals used in wind turbines around the world. The country also dominates raw materials refining and cell production for electric vehicle batteries.

RUNNING OUT OF OPTIONS  

As former British diplomat and China expert Charlie Parton noted in 2018: “China can print money, but it cannot print water.” China’s potential way out of this predicament is bounded by harsh economic, physical, and political realities. Perhaps the most dramatic and comprehensive reform would be to encourage efficiency by making water more expensive. But this will not be easy, as China’s input-intensive heavy industrial base and its rural farmers are accustomed to cheap water. Although agriculture accounts for over 60 percent of China’s water consumption, the vast majority of farms are under three acres. Small and midsize farms operating on thin margins may not be able to afford water-saving equipment such as drip irrigation. Moreover, consolidation of farm holdings is politically sensitive and would likely still prove insufficient; the default response of northern Chinese farmers faced with declining water tables has been to simply dig deeper wells and install more powerful pumps—responses that would only accelerate a crisis.

The government could also work to shift consumer habits through persuasion. As far back as 2016, Beijing was encouraging citizens to switch from eating water-intensive rice, the country’s traditional staple, to potatoes, which require less water to produce. But officials have done little to enforce such campaigns, which belie the CCP’s preferred narrative of economic progress and increasing living standards reflected through rising consumption of goods and services. It is also true that it is easier for the government to prevent citizens from doing things it deems undesirable than to compel them to do things it wants, such as having more children , pursuing consumerist ambitions, and eating more water-efficient potatoes.

China can print money, but it cannot print water.

China’s central and local leaders may gravitate toward supply-side solutions, but these may be insufficient to tackle the country’s daunting water challenge. The still functioning 2,200-year-old Dujiangyan Irrigation Works in Sichuan is a testament to China’s long history as a global hydraulic engineering superpower and suggests a likely focus on supply-side measures to address structural water shortages. The South-to-North Water Diversion Project aims to transfer up to 21 billion cubic meters of water annually from the Yangtze River Basin by 2030 and is projected to ultimately move over twice that volume. Yet this project does not come close to resolving the supply gap in northern China, as evidenced by recent announced plans to divert water from the Three Gorges Dam in Hubei province to Beijing. Likewise, shifting water from farther afield, such as the Tibetan Plateau or Lake Baikal in Russia , appears to be geologically difficult, prohibitively costly, and politically infeasible.

Desalination is another potential supply-side solution. But scaling desalination up to the level needed to close China’s water supply gap would be a gargantuan task. The roughly 20,000 desalination plants in operation worldwide can produce about 36.5 billion cubic meters of water per year. This amounts to merely six percent of China’s annual water consumption, highlighting the difficulty of relying on desalination to close China’s estimated 25 percent water supply gap. Moreover, desalination is highly energy intensive—at a time when China’s electric grid is already straining to maintain output. The high energy intensity of desalination also means that desalinated water would be far more expensive than other supplies, potentially by a factor of 10. Party officials would then face a choice of either subsidizing water rates or accepting major (and likely, politically disruptive) adjustments to decades-old industrial and consumer expectations founded on access to low-cost water.

China-centric supply chains took decades to build and cannot be easily or quickly moved elsewhere. This is all the more reason for governments to act now to prepare key global markets for an extended water crisis in China. Nor is past experience much of a guide: when China suffered widespread multiyear droughts in 1876 and 1928, it was not the “factory floor of the world.” Today’s global supply chains are woefully unprepared for a Chinese drought that could disrupt grain trade patterns and key industrial materials production across multiple continents. As China continues overexploiting groundwater amid intensified weather volatility, it moves closer each year to a catastrophic water event, and forceful steps must be taken while there is still time.

You are reading a free article.

Subscribe to foreign affairs to get unlimited access..

• Paywall-free reading of new articles and over a century of archives
• Unlock access to iOS/Android apps to save editions for offline reading
• Six issues a year in print and online, plus audio articles
• GABRIEL COLLINS is the Baker Botts Fellow in Energy and Environmental Regulatory Affairs at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy and a Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies.
• GOPAL REDDY is the founder of Ready for Climate, a research platform focused on the national security and economic risks stemming from climate change. He was also the founder of Chakra Capital Partners.
• More By Gabriel Collins
• More By Gopal Reddy

Most-Read Articles

The undoing of israel.

The Dark Futures That Await After the War in Gaza

Ilan Z. Baron and Ilai Z. Saltzman

How everything became national security.

And National Security Became Everything

Daniel W. Drezner

China’s real economic crisis.

Why Beijing Won’t Give Up on a Failing Model

Zongyuan Zoe Liu

The forgotten history of the financial crisis.

What the World Should Have Learned in 2008

Recommended Articles

The global food crisis shouldn’t have come as a surprise.

How to Finally Fix the Broken System for Alleviating Hunger

Christopher B. Barrett

How to solve the global water crisis.

The Real Challenges Are Not Technical, but Political

Scott Moore

• Economics & Finance
• Foreign Policy
• Domestic Policy
• Health & Science
• All Publications

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

Table of Contents

Gabriel collins, gopal reddy, share this publication.

• Print This Publication

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.

Related Research

Baker Briefing: Lessons From Hurricane Beryl

Annexation of Taiwan: A Defeat From Which the US and Its Allies Could Not Retreat

Chile’s New Lithium Strategy: A Market Boost or Miss?

Stanford University

SPICE is a program of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

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.”

• AsianStudies.org
• Annual Conference
• EAA Articles
• 2025 Annual Conference March 13-16, 2025
• AAS Community Forum Log In and Participate

Education About Asia: Online Archives

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Share this:

• Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)

1. National Intelligence Council, Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World (Washington, DC: National Intelligence Council, 2008).

2. Nathan Nankivell, The National Security Implications of China’s Emerging Water Crisis (Washington, DC: Jamestown Foundation, 2005). Also available at http://tinyurl. com/ydarr2a6 .

3. For these and other data, see David Pietz and Mark Giordano, “Yellow River Management: Continuity and Change,” in River Basins: Trajectories, Societies, and Environments, eds. François Molle and Philippus Wester (London: CABI, 2009).

4. Nankivell, “The National Security Implications of China’s Emerging Water Crisis.”

5. Report cited in “China Needs to Cut Use of Chemical Fertilizer: Research,” Reuters, last modified January 14, 2010, http://tinyurl.com/yhovg3q .

6. For these and other data, see Fiza Malik, “Water Pollution in China,” Prezi, last modified June 10, 2014, http://tinyurl.com/y8ua4hfb .

7. See T Truong, “The Impact of Environmental Changes on Zoonotic Diseases,” Serendip Studio, last modified October 25, 2009, http://tinyurl.com/y79rogxc . For a general discussion, see Sonia Shah, “The Spread of New Diseases: The Climate Connection,” Yale Environment 360, last modified October 15, 2009, http://tinyurl.com/ yk8lsj7 .

8. Jin Zhu, “Climate Change ‘Takes Toll’ on Grain Harvest,” China Daily , May 11, 2010, http://tinyurl.com/ydd6od2o .

9. Elizabeth Economy, “Asia’s Water Security Crisis: China, India, and the United States,” in Ashley Tellis, Mercy Kuo, and Andrew Marble, eds., Strategic Asia 2008– 2009: Challenges and Choices (Washington, DC: National Bureau of Asian Research, 2008), 379–380.

• Latest News
• Join or Renew
• Education About Asia
• Education About Asia Articles
• Asia Shorts Book Series
• Asia Past & Present
• Key Issues in Asian Studies
• Journal of Asian Studies
• The Bibliography of Asian Studies
• AAS-Gale Fellowship
• Council Grants
• Book Prizes
• Graduate Student Paper Prizes
• Distinguished Contributions to Asian Studies Award
• First Book Subvention Program
• External Grants & Fellowships
• AAS Career Center
• Asian Studies Programs & Centers
• Study Abroad Programs
• Language Database
• Conferences & Events
• #AsiaNow Blog

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.

• Public Policy

More From Knowledge at Wharton

What I’ve Learned: Olivia S. Mitchell

Why Skilled Immigration Can Lead to Economic Prosperity

Who Should Moderate Social Media Content?

Looking for more insights.

Sign up to stay informed about our latest article releases.

Issue Brief: Water Resource Issues, Policy and Politics in China

Subscribe to the china bulletin, scott moore scott moore director, penn global china program - university of pennsylvania.

February 12, 2013

• 23 min read

Content from the Brookings-Tsinghua Public Policy Center is now archived . Since October 1, 2020, Brookings has maintained a limited partnership with Tsinghua University School of Public Policy and Management that is intended to facilitate jointly organized dialogues, meetings, and/or events.

Editor’s note: Scott Moore is Giorgio Ruffolo Doctoral Research Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School. He was a guest researcher at Brookings’ John L. Thornton China Center and Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public Policy in the spring of 2012. His research project was made possible by the generous support of the Ford Foundation.

Among the many challenges to China’s current economic development trajectory, water resource constraints are among the most worrisome. According to Barry Naughton, one of the foremost experts on the Chinese economy, “China’s greatest development challenges…are in the areas where a dense population pushes up against the limits of water and what the land can provide.” [1] The water resource challenge to China’s development is exceptionally complex, encompassing a blend of geographical, political, economic, and social dimensions. 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 effectiveness of these policies.

In short, China’s water resource challenge consists of both water quantity and quality issues, each of which present distinctive challenges for Chinese policy. Although the Chinese government is implementing perhaps the world’s most ambitious water resource management strategy, its efforts risk being undermined by inter-governmental rivalries, corruption, and incentives that favor economic development over sustainable resource use. In particular, inter-jurisdictional conflicts over water resources threaten to undermine policies to address water scarcity, while mis-matched incentives between pollution control and economic development at local levels of government threaten to undermine water quality control objectives.

Plenty of water, in all the wrong places

In aggregate, China possesses substantial water resources, constituting the world’s fifth-largest national endowment of fresh water. By per-capita standards, however, China’s water resources are much more modest at approximately 2000 cubic meters per person annually, as compared to a global average of about 6200 m 3 /person/year. [2] These aggregate statistics nonetheless conceal marked regional discrepancies in precipitation and irrigation patterns, which combined with uneven distributions in population and economic activity mean that some areas possess plentiful water resources while others face chronic and crippling shortages. While residents of the sparsely populated, mountainous southwest enjoy some 25,000 cubic meters of freshwater per person annually, those of the populous and arid north have less than 500. [3] Some of China’s largest and fastest-growing urban areas, notably Beijing and Tianjin, and its most water-intensive crops, especially wheat, are located and grown in the arid north, where annual precipitation is less than one-third of that in southern coastal areas. For the past few decades, water-stressed areas have relied on groundwater to make up the difference, but since at least the 1970s rates of withdrawal have become unsustainable, and water tables are dropping by approximately one meter annually throughout the North China Plain. [4] Apart from making water more difficult and expensive to access, over-pumping of freshwater allows saltwater to penetrate aquifers in some areas, rendering them unfit for human consumption. [5]

Other factors exacerbate this fundamental geographic mal-distribution of water availability and demand. Climate change is expected to intensify aridity in northern China, [6] enhancing its scarcity of both surface and subsurface water supplies. Moreover, although the arid north depends on irrigated agriculture, its irrigation systems are exceptionally inefficient. Less than half the water withdrawn for irrigation actually reaches crops because of leaky equipment and rapid evaporation, while the overall economic productivity of water is about US$3.50 per cubic meter, compared to a developed-nation average of US$36. [7] Rising demand for water-intensive crops like wheat, [8] as well as other commodities which require large quantities of water to produce, process, and refine, further stress water resources. China’s coal use, in particular, contributes to its water scarcity challenges—independent estimates suggest that it takes between 800 and 3000 gallons of water to process a ton of coal. [9] China’s largest coal basin stretches across five provinces in the North, and the scarcity of water there is already constraining production, especially for smaller, less-efficient mines. These growing pressures on water resources, particularly in north China, are of mounting concern to the Chinese government. The Vice-Minister for Water Resources confided last year that China faces an “increasingly grim” water scarcity situation. [10]

The Chinese government has adopted two basic policy responses to the water scarcity problem. First, it has continued to finance the gigantic South-North Water Transfer Project, or SNWTP ( Nanshui beidiao gongcheng 南水北调工程). The SNWTP eventually aims to transfer some 45 billion cubic meters of water per year from central and southwest China to augment the flow of the Yellow River and meet urban water demand in the Beijing-Tianjin region. The Project envisions eastern, central, and western routes, of which the first is under construction and the second in a stage of advanced planning. All three routes pose enormous technical challenges: the eastern and central routes will be channeled under the Yellow River, while the western route entails pumping water at elevations of 10-16,000 feet above sea level over part of the Himalayan mountain range.

Although completion of the three routes is expected to meet projected water demand growth in the north, thus redressing China’s fundamental geographic disparity in water availability, its costs will be enormous. Estimates suggest a figure of around US$62 billion, the final cost is likely to be markedly higher. Moreover, estimates of the number of people who must be resettled range from several hundreds of thousands to over a million, adding substantial social disruption to the Project’s total cost. [11] Moreover, the SNWTP has necessitated additional water diversion and storage works to bring water into regions tapped to export water to the north, as well as treatment facilities to ensure that the water is clean enough to supply drinking water to northern cities. [12]

In addition to the supply-augmentation approach represented by the SNWTP, the Chinese government has also attempted to improve water use efficiency and to limit overall demand. A 2002 Water Law attempted to establish a strict licensing regime whereby virtually all water resources were declared to be the property of the state, and water use was made contingent on obtaining a usage license from local authorities. At the same time, the Water Conservancy Commissions (WCCs; Shuili weiyuanhui 水利委员会 ) established under the Ministry of Water Resources (MWR; Shuilibu 水利部) in China’s major river basins were given comprehensive water use planning responsibilities which were intended to guide local water use licensing. [13] Subsequent regulations [14] have established the basis for water rights trading, and a few such transfers have taken place between municipalities. [15]

In 2010, China’s Communist Party Central Committee and State Council promulgated a “three red lines” ( santiao hongxian 三条红线) policy intended to establish clear and binding limits on water quantity usage, efficiency, and quality. In early 2012, the State Council announced that the “three red lines” policy would limit total national water consumption to less than 700 billion cubic meters per year, amounting to approximately three-quarters of China’s total annual exploitable freshwater resources. [16] In addition, the policy attempts to increase irrigation use efficiency to 60% by 2030. [17] These headline policies are augmented by increased investment, including 1.8 trillion RMB in 2011-2015, primarily for irrigation infrastructure improvements, rural clean water delivery, and reservoir enhancements. [18]

In combination, these policies seek to redress China’s regional imbalance in water availability, while making overall water use sustainable. However, they are likely to be undermined by conflict between regions which are asked to bear the costs of storing and transferring water, and those which benefit as a result. The dynamics of these conflicts is illustrated by the case of a dam, first proposed in 1954, intended to be built on the upper reaches of the Yellow River in order to provide water to poor farmers in Ningxia. Gansu Province, claiming that the dam would inundate some of its best farmland, has managed to prevent construction of the dam by lobbying different elements of the central government than those which had supported the dam. The dispute remains unresolved; in 2010, Ningxia’s representatives to the China People’s Political Consultative Conference ( zhengzhi xie shanghuiyi 政治协商会议 ) took the unusual step of presenting a petition to the full Conference to build the dam. [19]

Similarly, water-exporting provinces in central China have complained at the costs they are expected to bear as part of the SNWTP for water treatment, refugee resettlement, and other issues, prompting the central government to impose an “SNWTP tax” on Beijing and other beneficiaries of the project. [20] Similar rivalries threaten to undermine water licensing and water rights trading schemes. In times of shortage, upstream provinces often reduce flows to their downstream neighbors, [21] and regularly appropriate water in excess of MWR quotas. [22] In short, although China’s current policies can theoretically alleviate the geographic imbalance in water resources, they do not adequately address the inter-jurisdictional political and economic conflicts which are likely to result. In a similar fashion, policies to improve water quality are undermined by the complexity of relationships between central and local levels of government.

A crisis of water quality

Water quality is arguably an even more serious problem than is water shortage. In rural areas, where less than half the population has access to purified water, agricultural run-off is the dominant pollution source, while in urban areas human and industrial waste are left largely untreated, contaminating both surface and underground water supplies. [23] Recent reports from China’s environmental protection authorities indicate that in the country as a whole, less than half of China’s water can be treated to the point where it is safe for drinking, and a quarter of surface waters are so polluted that they are unfit even for industrial use. Independent estimates are even more pessimistic. [24]

This crisis of water quality has contributed to a serious environmental health crisis. Arsenic poisoning from contaminated groundwater is thought to be widespread, and in some areas high incidences of particular cancers have been linked to organic water pollution. [25] The ecological impact of high pollution levels is also acute, dramatically reducing freshwater wild fish populations as well as driving larger animals like the baiji (白鱀豚) , or Yangtze dolphin, to the very brink of extinction. [26] Water pollution issues have, moreover, proved to be particularly politically contentious. In 2005, the accidental release of some 100 tons of carcinogenic chemicals into a river near China’s northeastern border with Russia produced a diplomatic crisis, [27] and in 2001 pollution from dye factories in Suzhou provoked residents of downstream Jiaxing, Zhejiang Province to pool funds to buy old boats and sink them in the waterway, forming a dam that blocked up the polluted water into neighboring Jiangsu Province. [28]

The Chinese government’s policy responses to water quality issues rely largely on strengthening monitoring capabilities and enforcement mechanisms. The 2008 Water Pollution Law attempted to strengthen earlier legislation by providing for increased penalties, including stiff fines for the executives of polluting enterprises. [29] As part of a broader push to expand monitoring of pollution, Regional Supervision Centers were established throughout China to keep an eye on local enterprises, [30] and water quality bureaus were set up within the MWR’s river basin commissions. This institutional expansion has been complemented by continuing regulatory reform. The “three red lines” policy introduced a new requirement that 95% of tested water must meet national water quality guidelines, which have recently been expanded and updated to cover a wide range of organic and microbial pollutants as well as concentrations of heavy metals. [31] To help meet these standards, the government announced in late 2011 a five-year, 380 billion RMB investment plan to improve urban wastewater treatment facilities, as well as the establishment of some 14,000 monitoring stations throughout the country to continuously monitor water quality. [32]

Just as regional rivalries threaten to undermine water quantity policies, however, bureaucratic fragmentation and capacity discrepancies threaten to de-rail these water quality initiatives. Although MWR is broadly responsible for water project construction and water quantity issues, the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP; Huanjing baohu bu 环境保护部) is primarily responsible for water pollution control. MEP is a relatively new entity, having been elevated to ministerial-level status only in 2008, and it is generally less powerful than the older and more established MWR. MEP also lacks institutional capacity relative to MWR; while MEP must supervise hundreds of thousands of enterprises with a core staff numbering in the hundreds, the MWR’s Yellow River Conservancy Commission alone employs some 30,000 people. [33] This imbalance in resources means that MEP relies on local environmental protection bureaus (EPBs), over which it possesses only partial control, to enforce water pollution regulations.

Such incomplete control is a consequence of China’s distinctive tiao-kuai (条块) administrative system, in which officials at lower levels of government are responsible both to line control by functional bureaucracies, such as the various ministries, as well as to territorial government leaders, including mayors and provincial governors. [34] These territorial government cadres are evaluated and promoted based on a detailed set of criteria known as kaohe (考核) which prioritizes economic growth, with the result that they often pressure EPBs to employ “light-touch” regulation, or encourage enterprises to channel pollution into waterways which flow into neighboring jurisdictions.  MEP’s difficulty in exercising control over EPBs also stems from China’s decentralized fiscal structure, in which environmental protection authorities are financed largely by pollution fines levied in their individual jurisdictions rather than centrally-disbursed grants. [35]

MEP’s difficulties in exercising sufficient supervision and enforcement of local EPBs are illustrated by a recent chemical pollution incident in Yancheng, Jiangsu Province. [36] In 2004, environmental protection authorities raised concerns regarding water pollution in the city, and in 2005 the Biaoxin Chemical Company was fined for exceeding pollution discharge limitations and ordered to eliminate discharges into waterways within Yancheng. In 2008, local environmental protection authorities decreed that all industrial enterprises were to be re-located away from the city’s river, its primary source of drinking water. These directives were ignored, however, and in 2009 Biaoxin Chemical released large quantities of carbolic acid into the waterway, forcing some 200,000 people to rely on bottled water and wells for several days. MEP called a press conference pledging to punish those responsible, and a subsequent investigation concluded that company officials concluded simply that regulatory “compliance is expensive, evasion is cheap” ( shoufa chengben gao, weifa chengben di 守法成本高，违法成本低). As a result of the investigation, two local environmental protection officials were fired for neglecting their duties, and another five were reprimanded. [37] Nonetheless, similar if less dramatic releases of highly toxic pollutants remain common, reflecting the institutional barriers to resolving China’s water quality crisis.

Management of the Yellow River: a partial success story

China’s water quantity and quality problems coincide dramatically in the case of the Yellow River, where management efforts in recent decades have partially succeeded in easing chronic over-use of water resources while nonetheless leaving fundamental issues unaddressed. The Yellow is one of the world’s most intensively exploited river systems, being home to some 110 million people in the semi-arid North China Plain. Since the early 1970s, the scale of water withdrawal from the river has meant that it has failed to reach the sea for much of the year, a phenomenon known in Chinese as “desiccation of the Yellow” or Huangehe duanliu (黄河断流). In the early 1980s, the MWR’s Yellow River Conservancy Commission (YRCC; Huanghe shuili weiyuanhui 黄河水利委员会 ) formulated a provincial water resource allocation plan which granted the more economically-developed provinces of the middle and lower reaches the right to utilize much of the river’s flow. [38]  However, rapid population growth and economic development along the upper reaches outstripped estimates, and in 1995-1998, the Yellow failed to reach the sea for about 120 days each year, in some years failing even to reach Shandong Province. [39] Consequently, in 1998 the YRCC promulgated more strict provincial water use regulations [40] and began planning a sophisticated “Digital Yellow River” ( shuzi Huangehe 数字黄河)system to monitor water use and flow conditions in near-real time. [41]

These efforts have been successful in halting the desiccation of the Yellow, which has continually reached the sea since 1999. However, flows remain below levels considered necessary to satisfy ecological needs, and water quality has continued to deteriorate, with the percentage of river water designated as “Class V” or lowest-quality water increasing from 34 to 42% from 1998-2001. [42] Much of these lingering problems stem from the inter-jurisdictional conflict and mismatched incentives described above. Referring to the 1998 regulations, a 2011 YRCC report acknowledged that “In implementing the Yellow River water quantity regulations, there exist some localities which do not put into practice the water quantity allocation and dispatch plan, and exceed the allocation limits in using water resulting from inter-provincial flows not according with control limits.” [43] A recent Caijing news report likewise notes that provinces skirt Yellow River allocation rules by extracting water from tributaries of the Yellow before it enters the main stream. “Tributary water quantity allocations are not clearly defined,” the report notes, “meaning that each province can utilize water before it enters the Yellow River, and before it becomes part of the Yellow River water quantity allocation limits.” [44] The case of the Yellow River thus illustrates that while China has the capacity to address some of its pressing water resource challenges, fully meeting them will require deeper and more systematic reform of governance systems and institutions.         

Water Scarcity and Pollution: Constraints on China’s future?

China’s water resource challenges are acute, but it has also developed a substantial policy infrastructure to meet them. What remains is to ensure that policies to address water scarcity and to improve water quality are implemented effectively and efficiently. The barriers to policy implementation identified in this Issue Brief reflect some deep-seated and systematic issues in China’s governance system. Inter-jurisdictional and inter-agency coordination, cooperation, and communication mechanisms are under-developed, while weaknesses in the rule of law undermine regulation and enforcement procedures. Fully addressing water quantity and quality issues therefore entails some basic and systematic institutional and political reforms, all of which will require substantial political will. Nonetheless, if this can be mustered, five reforms would greatly aid China in addressing water resource quantity and quality issues.

• First, the Party’s cadre evaluation system should be overhauled to emphasize environmental and water resource management metrics. Some reforms have already been undertaken, but economic and stability criteria remain of paramount importance. [45] Although environmental outcomes are more difficult to measure than GDP growth, technologies like those employed in the Digital Yellow River system make it easier to hold cadres responsible for water quality and quantity issues within their jurisdictions.
• Second, formalized mechanisms for inter-provincial consultation should be established at regional scales. In particular, provincial governments should be given formal representation on the Water Conservancy Commissions which manage China’s major river basins on behalf of MWR. Although the Commissions maintain extensive links with local governments, formalizing representation would improve stakeholder involvement and enhance policy buy-in.
• Third, high-level encouragement should be given to inter-governmental cooperation on water resource issues, which are by nature inter-departmental. As part of this initiative, a high-level working group should be established under the State Council to coordinate policy implementation between MWR, MEP, and other relevant entities, and provide advice to decision-makers. This effort should be led by a senior leader, preferably at the Presidential or Prime Ministerial level, in order to ensure active participation by ministerial units.
• Fourth, the central government should aim to strengthen the legal system to enable more effective water rights trading. Title and trading procedures should be clarified, special courts for dispute resolution created, and markets brought to a larger scale. Ideally this effort should be undertaken as part of a broader set of legal reforms which might aim to strengthen judicial independence and the rule of law more generally.   
• Fifth, both MEP and MWR should encourage the involvement of civil society groups in water pollution monitoring. Although the government is wary of such involvement, it can channel growing concern over water issues for constructive purposes by making civil society groups an adjunct to water pollution monitoring efforts. 

The gravity of China’s water resource challenges cannot be overstated—in order to chart a sustainable development pathway in future decades China must use substantially less water much more efficiently, while also improving water quality. The government has built the foundations of a credible policy response, but these must be strengthened, expanded and built upon if China is to avoid a water resource constraint to its future growth and development.

[1] Barry Naughton, The Chinese Economy: Transitions and Growth .  Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007, 30.

[2] World Bank, “Renewable internal fresh water resources per capita (cubic meters),” 2012, available at http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ER.H2O.INTR.PC (accessed October 28, 2012).  

[3] UN Food and Agriculture Organization, “China,” 2010, available at http://www.fao.org/nr/water/aquastat/countries_regions/china/index.stm (accessed 22 July 2012). 

[4] Eloise Kendy, David Molden, Tammo Steenhuis, Changming Liu, and Jinxia Wang, Politics Drain the North China Plain: Agricultural policy and groundwater depletion in Luancheng County, 1949-2000 .  Colombo, Sri Lanka: International Water Management Institute Research Report 71, 2003; Jane Qiu, “China faces up to groundwater crisis,” Nature 466 (308): 2010, doi:10.1038/466308a.

[5] KP Chen and JJ Jiao, “Seawater intrusion and aquifer freshening near reclaimed coastal area of Shenzhen,” Water Science and Technology: Water Supply 7 (2007), 137-145. 

[6] National Development and Reform Commission, National Climate Change Program.  Beijing: National Leading Group on Climate Change, 2009. 

[7] UN Food and Agriculture Organization, op. cit. 

[8] Jeff Wilson, “Corn, soybeans, wheat gain as China’s demand for imports climbs,” BloombergBusinessweek, October 14, 2011, available at http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-10-14/corn-soybeans-wheat-gain-as-china-s-demand-for-imports-climbs.html (accessed 28 October 2012). 

[9] Keith Schneider, “Choke Point: China – Confronting water scarcity and energy demand in the world’s largest country,” Circle of Blue, February 15, 2011, available at http://www.circleofblue.org/waternews/2011/world/choke-point-chinaconfronting-water-scarcity-and-energy-demand-in-the-worlds-largest-country/ (accessed 28 October 2012). 

[10] Zhang Jiaoyong, “ Quanguo Shuiziyuan zonghe guihua [Comprehensive National Water Resource Plan],” Huanghe Shuili Weiyuanhui [Yellow River Water Conservancy Commission], August 2011, available at http://www.yellowriver.gov.cn/zwzc/zcfg/zcjd/201108/t20110811_82252.html (accessed 30 March 2012). 

[11] Carla Freeman, “Quenching the Dragon’s Thirst: the South-North Water Transfer Project—Old Plumbing for New China?” China Environment Forum Report.  Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 2011.  

[12] See National SNWTP Project Office, “Li Jincheng  Fuzhuren diaojiu Nanshuibeidiao dongxian  jiewu daoliu gongcheng he zhiwu gongzuo [Vice-Director Li Jincheng inspects the SNWTP east line pollution control efforts]”, available at http://www.nsbd.com.cn/NewsDisplay.asp?id=195490 (accessed 25 July 2012).

[13] Patricia Wouters, Desheng Hu, Zhang Jiebin, Philip Andrew-Speed, and Dan Tarlock, “The new development of water law in China,” University of Denver Law Review , 7, No. 2 (2004), 243-308; Dajun Shen, “River basin water resources management in China: a legal and institutional assessment,” Water International , 34, No. 4 (2009), 484-496. 

[14] Nicola Cenacchi, Yunpeng Xue, Fu Xinfeng, and Claudia Ringler, “Water rights and water rights trading: option for the Yellow River basin?,” International Food Policy Research Institute, 2010. 

[15] Zhou Jigang, Peng Guangcan, and Ceng Zhen, “Trading water in thirsty China,” China Dialogue, June 26, 2008, available at http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/2144-Trading-water-in-thirsty-China (accessed 28 October 2012). 

[16] China Daily, “Water usage to be monitored better,” China Daily, May 8, 2012, available at http://www.china.org.cn/environment/2012-05/08/content_25332381.htm (accessed 28 October 2012). 

[17] State Council, “Guowuyuan guanyu shixing zuiyange shuiziyuan guanli zhidu de yijian [State Council Opinion regarding the most strict water resource management system],” State Council Document No. 3 (2012), available at http://www.gov.cn/zwgk/2012-02/16/content_2067664.htm (accessed 25 July 2012).

[18] Xinhua, “China to invest heavily in water conservation,” Xinhua, February 10, 2012, available at http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2012-02/10/c_131403240.htm (accessed 28 October 2012).  

[19] Huanghe Shuili Weiyuanhui [Yellow River Water Conservancy Commission], Huanghe Guihuazhi [History of Yellow River Planning], Huanghezhi Quan Liu [Yellow River History Volume 6] (Zhengzhou, China: Henan Renmin Chubanshe [Henan People’s Press], 1991), p. 268-9.  

[20] Freeman, op. cit., pg. 5. 

[21] Zhou, Peng, and Ceng, “Trading water in thirsty China.” 

[22] Caijing, “Huanghe zhengduozhan: shui quan zhuan rang shichanghua jincheng shouzu [Yellow River Turf Battle: Water rights trading hinders the process of marketization],” Caijing News, July 28, 2011, available at http://www.caijing.com.cn/2011-07-28/110791023.html (accessed 28 October 2012).  

[23] Xinhua, “Half of China’s urban underground water polluted,” China Daily, May 28, 2012, available at http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2012-05/28/content_15404889.htm (accessed 28 October 2012). 

[24] David Stanway, “Pollution makes quarter of China water unusuable: ministry,” Reuters, July 26, 20120, available at http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/07/26/us-china-environment-water-idUSTRE66P39H20100726 (accessed 28 October 2012).  

[25] Wen-Qing Lu, Shao-Hua Xie, Wen-Shan Zhou, Shao-Hui Zhang, and Ai-Lin Liu, “Water Pollution and Health Impact in China: a Mini-Review,” Open Environmental Sciences 2 (2008), 1-5. 

[26] US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, “Chinese River Dolphin, “ February 17, 2012, available at http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/species/mammals/cetaceans/chineseriverdolphin.htm (accessed 28 October 2012). 

[27] World Bank, Water Pollution Emergencies in China: Prevention and Response.  Washington, DC: World Bank, June 2007. 

[28] Tang Zhen and Zhou Haiwei, “Chang Sandiao diqu kuajie shuishi jiufen xieshang mianlin de wenti ji duice [Problems and Solutions Faced in the Resolution of Yangtze Delta Trans-boundary Water Disputes],” Shuili Jingji [Water Conservancy Economics], Vol. 25 No. 2: 2007, pp. 70-77.

[29] Xinhua, “Tougher law to curb water pollution,” China Daily , February 29, 2008, available at http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2008-02/29/content_6494712.htm (accessed 28 October 2012). 

[30] Scott Moore, “Shifting Power in Central-Local Environmental Governance in China: the Regional Supervision Centers,” China Environment Series , 11: 2010/2011, 188-200. 

[31] Shanghai Daily, “Stricter water standards to be applied nationwide,” May 14, 2012, available at http://english.cri.cn/6909/2012/05/14/1461s699430.htm (accessed 28 October 2012). 

[32] Global Water Intelligence, “Five years to clean up China’s wastewater,” Global Water Intelligence 13(1): January 2012, available at http://www.globalwaterintel.com/archive/13/1/general/five-years-clean-chinas-wastewater.html (accessed 28 October 2012). 

[33] Interview with foreign consultant to Yellow River Conservancy Commission. 

[34] Andrew Mertha, “China’s ‘soft’ centralization: shifting tiao/kuai authority relations,” China Quarterly , 184, December 2005, pp. 791-810. 

[35] Abigail Jahiel, “The Contradictory Impact of Reform on Environmental Protection in China,” The China Quarterly , Vol. 149 (1997), pp. 81-103. 

[36] For an English account see Dolly Wu, “Two govt officials fired over China’s Yancheng pollution,” ICIS, March 4, 2009, available at http://www.icis.com/Articles/2009/03/04/9197274/two-govt-officials-fired-over-chinas-yancheng-pollution.html (accessed 28 October 2012). 

[37] Jean-Francois Tremblay, “Chinese mayor orders chemical plant closures,” Chemical and Engineering News, March 5, 2009, available at http://pubs.acs.org/cen/news/87/i10/8710news4.html (accessed 28 October, 2012). 

[38] Li Dong, “Guowuyuan Huanghe fenshui yu shuidiao fangan [State Council Yellow River Water Division and Water Transfer Plan],” Shui Xinxi Wang [Water Information Net], available at http://www.hwcc.gov.cn/pub/hwcc/wwgj/bgqy/jjqk/201003/t20100302_314548.html (accessed 5 April 2012), Guowuyuan [State Council], “Guowuyuan Bangongting Zhuanfa Guojiajiwei he Shuidianbu guanyu Huanghe Kegong shuiliang fenpei fangan baogao de tongzhi [Notice by the State Council Office to the State Planning Commission and the Ministry of Water and Power regarding the Report on the Yellow River Water Use Quantity Allocation Plan],” Guowuyuan Wenjian [State Council Document] 1987, No. 61.  

[39] Michael Giordano, Zhongping Zhu, Ximing Cai, Shangqi Hong, Xuecheng Zhang, and Yunpeng Xue, “Water Management in the Yellow River Basin: Background, current critical issues and future research needs,” Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture Research Report 3.  Colombo, Sri Lanka: Comprehensive Assessment Secretariat, International Water Management Institute, 2004, p. 19.  

[40] Shuilibu [Ministry of Water Resources], “Huanghe Shuiliang tiaodu guanli banfa [Yellow River Water Quantity Dispatching and Management Measures],” 14 December 1998, Tongzhi [Notice] No. 2520. 

[41] China Daily, “Yellow River gets digital hydrological station,” China Daily, June 16, 2002.  Available at http://www.china.org.cn/english/environment/34780.htm (accessed 28 October 2012). 

[42] Giordano et al. 2004, p. 28. 

[43] Huangshuihui [YRCC], “’Huanghe shuiliang tiaodu tiaoli’ zhiding yu shijian [Formulation and Implementation of the ‘Yellow River Water Quantity Dispatching Regulations’],” 14 August 2011, available at http://www.yellowriver.gov.cn/zlcp/kjcg/kjcg07/201108/t20110814_103291.html (accessed 5 April 2012). 

[44] Caijing [Finance and Economics], “Huanghe shui zhengdouzhan: shuiquan zhuanrang shichanghua jincheng shouzu [Struggle over Yellow River water: water rights transfer and marketization process hits a snag],” 28 July 2011, Caijing Wang [Finance and Economics Net], available at http://www.caijing.com.cn/2011-07-28/110791023.html (accessed 5 April 2012). 

[45] Kai-yuen Tsui and Youqiang Wang, “Between Separate Stoves and a Single Menu: Fiscal Decentralization in China,” The China Quarterly, Vol. 177 (2004), pg. 75.

Foreign Policy

Asia & the Pacific China

John L. Thornton China Center

Online Only

9:30 am - 10:30 am EDT

Nasrin Siddiqa, Atenea Rosado-Viurques

April 23, 2024

Kevin Dong, Mallie Prytherch, Lily McElwee, Patricia M. Kim, Jude Blanchette, Ryan Hass

March 15, 2024

Home — Essay Samples — History — China Crisis — China Water Crisis: Causes and Consequences

China Water Crisis: Causes and Consequences

• Categories: China China Crisis

About this sample

Words: 960 |

Published: Oct 25, 2023

Words: 960 | Pages: 2 | 5 min read

Table of contents

Introduction, economic consequences, social stability, environmental degradation, global implications.

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Verified writer

• Expert in: Geography & Travel History

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

2 pages / 753 words

2 pages / 939 words

1 pages / 357 words

3 pages / 1757 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on China Crisis

China's rapid rise as a global economic and political power has been a defining feature of the 21st century. Its transformation from a relatively closed economy to the world's second-largest has disrupted traditional global [...]

Financial crises have been a recurring theme in the modern global economy, often characterized by asset bubbles, excessive lending, and speculative behavior. The China crisis of recent years, marked by concerns about its [...]

The North didn't know what to do with the confederate leaders. They were pardoned by President Johnson in 1868 but did not remove the remaining civilian disabilities. The South is ruined. Economy collapsed. Business and [...]

Feminism, as defined by Merriam-Webster, it is the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes, and also organized activity on behalf of women’s rights and interest. Feminism is obviously prevalent in the [...]

The deep-rooted diplomatic relations between the Kingdom of the Netherlands and Romania can be traced back centuries ago. On the 13 February 2015 both countries’ embassies celebrated 135 years of successful cooperation between [...]

The concept of death with dignity has been a topic of considerable debate in contemporary society. Some view it as an opportunity to end unbearable suffering, while others, echoing the sentiments of Mother Teresa, argue that it [...]

Related Topics

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Where do you want us to send this sample?

By clicking “Continue”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Be careful. This essay is not unique

This essay was donated by a student and is likely to have been used and submitted before

Download this Sample

Free samples may contain mistakes and not unique parts

Sorry, we could not paraphrase this essay. Our professional writers can rewrite it and get you a unique paper.

Please check your inbox.

We can write you a custom essay that will follow your exact instructions and meet the deadlines. Let's fix your grades together!

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

• Phone This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.
• Climate Change
• Policy & Economics
• Biodiversity
• Conservation

Get focused newsletters especially designed to be concise and easy to digest

• ESSENTIAL BRIEFING 3 times weekly
• TOP STORY ROUNDUP Once a week
• MONTHLY OVERVIEW Once a month
• Enter your email *

Tackling China’s Water Shortage Crisis

Water underpins a country’s development, and China – one of the world’s fastest-growing economies – is no exception. Water supports the country’s 1.43 billion population and booming industries, but it is limited and unevenly distributed. In 2005, Former Chinese premier Wen Jiabao warned of the danger of water shortages which he said would threaten “the very survival of the Chinese nation.” Climate change is diminishing accessible water resources in China, triggering a severe water shortage crisis within the national boundary. Massive water projects are being constructed to deal with this shortage crisis, bringing a new range of environmental, social, and geopolitical challenges.

Home to 20% of the global population, China has only 6% of the world’s total freshwater resources. 2014 statistics from the World Bank indicate that the total renewable water resource per inhabitant amounts to just 2,018 cubic meters per year  75% less than the global average. 

Causes of the Water Shortage Crisis in China

Climate change plays a key role in the water shortage crisis in China. For thousands of years, civilisations along the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers fed on the glacial meltwater from the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau – also known as ‘ The Third Pole ’. Once a stable source of river flow, the ice mass is now less capable of supplying glacial melt with fresh snow and ice, since global warming has raised the temperature of the glacial region by 3- 3.5C  over the past half-century.

A study by Greenpeace in 2018 revealed that 82% of China’s glaciers have retreated and more than one-fifth of the ice cover has disappeared since the 1950s. Consequently, glacial run-off into the Yangtze alone has been reduced by 13.9% since the 1990s, lessening freshwater availability. Greenpeace anticipates the shortage will become “dramatically” acute when the glaciers reach their ‘peak water’ – when the rate of water consumption surpasses water supply – which could happen as early as 2030.

Meanwhile, increasing temperatures have also changed atmospheric circulation. It has become more difficult for humid summer monsoons to reach northern and inland areas, resulting in more unreliable rainfall patterns. This abnormally dry weather has been experienced by Beijing in recent years: between October 2017 and February 2018, no precipitation , including rain and snow, was recorded in the metropolis. The 116-day drought is unprecedented in the country’s record. 

The country’s uneven resource distribution further exacerbates the scarcity problem: 80% of water is concentrated in South China, but the North is the core of national development. For instance, President Xi Jingping’s JingJinJi Project initiated in 2014 integrates three heavily industrialised Northern provinces- Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei – as a single megalopolis to compete with other world-class economic regions such as the New York Tri-State Area. The estimated population of the regions combined is 130 million , whereas the water available for consumption annually per person in the three provinces stands below 184 cubic meters (Hubei is below 100) as illustrated by the China Statistical Yearbook (CSY), far below the 500 cubic meter standard of water scarcity. Water is insufficient in the North and intense development is only putting more pressure on water demand. 

The combination of inefficient water management and widespread water pollution has rendered China unable to effectively supply enough consumable water in some provinces; this is not taking into consideration the demand for water in future urbanisation. 

You might also like: China Sets Goal For Climate Neutrality By 2060

The Solutions to the China Water Shortage Crisis

The pressing water shortage crisis has forced China to develop various water schemes to boost water availability in dry regions; the South-North Water Transfer Project (SNWTP) is arguably the most well-known. With its conceptualisation traced back to the 1950s, the project is the largest and most expensive engineering work in the country; it is expected to cost US$62 billion by completion in 2050, almost double the Three Gorges Dam Project. 

The SNWTP aims to alleviate the water shortage problem in northern China by moving water from the Yangtze River in the South through 1 500 kilometre-long canals. The East and Middle routes – each taking 10 years to build – have been in service since 2013 and 2014 respectively and are capable of transferring 20.9 billion cubic meters of water each year. The West Route is expected to be completed by 2050. 

However, the project opens the door to environmental, social and geopolitical challenges. 

New Environment Problems

As construction advances across the country, natural landscapes are harmed, leading to biodiversity loss. All three routes will change natural hydrology on an unprecedentedly large scale; the East Route rises the water level of the four lakes it passes through. A study in 2009 estimated that aquatic plants will decline by up to 0.25 million tons in Dongping Lake surrounding the construction of the East Route. Freshwater clams, whitebaits and algae are among those species that will be affected. 

It is not the first time China’s water schemes have led to the disappearance of local species. In the last decade, the construction of the Three Gorges Dam has permanently changed the Yangtze’s landscape, damaging the habit of the already-endangered baiji dolphin and rendering them ‘functionally extinct’ at the end of 2006. 

The same study also warns of the potential of southern aquatic species invading northern waters; increasing global temperatures are making waters at higher latitudes habitable for southern species, threatening the biodiversity of the water-receiving regions. Research in 2017 warned of the invasion potential of three southern aquatic plants, namely alligator weed, water hyacinth and water lettuce; alligator weed has already invaded Shandong Province in Northern China. The water diversion project is further facilitating this invasion. 

The project may change hydrology and microclimate in the region; a 10-year study analysing the potential climatic impacts of the Middle Route predicts that the sudden influx of water may alter local evaporation and precipitation rates by bringing more frequent convection (short and intense rain) to the area. Because rain patterns affect temperature, the researchers predict regional microclimate will be modified as the project progresses. 

You might also like: Historic Drought in China’s Sichuan Threatens Hydropower Supplies, Sparking Energy Rationing

Social Conflict and Political Instability

The project diverts natural resources to one mega-region at the expense of another, adversely impacting the social well-being of the southern water-supplying region and challenging China’s domestic stability in the long term. 

China’s provincial water disputes provoked the ‘ ‘blocking dam’ incident of 2001. Industries in the upstream Jiangsu province had been degrading the shared water of the Zhejiang province since the 1990s. A decline in usable water triggered Zhejiang residents to protest by sinking boats in the waterway to block the polluted water, revealing the provincial governments’ ineffective cooperation on resource management. If there is any public discontentment due to the SNWTP, it will not be merely provincial but regional, which could compromise the country’s national governance. 

The project forces about 330,000 people to relocate to allow for the expansion of the Danjiangkou reservoir on the Middle Route. Insufficient compensation and lack of employment opportunities have created difficult lives for the displaced population, igniting a number of revolts including violence against immigration officials and obstruction of main roads, as reported by China Daily . Coercive displacement is typical of command economies in communist countries like China, North Korea, and in the past, the Soviet Union, whereby the distribution of natural and human resources is manipulated by the central government to maximise national interests, while sacrificing individual rights. Forced evictions occur with most infrastructure projects in China, and is a constant source of mass protests. 

The water supply of the Yangtze Basin in Southern China relies on natural precipitation and glacial melt. As climate change accelerates Himalayan glacial retreat and brings abnormal weather, Southern China may become equally vulnerable to water insecurity; already, south-west China experienced a severe drought in 2011, which impacted the drinking and irrigation water of more than 60 million people. The SNWTP takes water from the Yangtze River and reduces its river discharge; a decline in groundwater may result in seawater flowing inland in dry seasons, contaminating the freshwater aquifers of the Yangtze Delta.

Military Implications and International Relations 

China’s South-East Asian neighbours are equally concerned by China’s response towards its water issues. Chinese territory hosts the headwaters of many important regional rivers. For example, the Mekong originates from the Tibetan Plateau and flows through Western China before reaching Laos, Thailand, Vietnam and Myanmar. The  Brahmaputra also flows across the boundary of China, Bangladesh and India. Therefore, China’s changes upstream can significantly impact the water of downstream countries. 

China is often feared to control regional water resources, shown in its reluctance to sign international agreements on cross-border water management. The country can seize water sources without any military force; because the rivers originate within its territory, they are seen as China’s natural assets. The SNWTP reinforces this impression- despite the inclusion of transboundary rivers such as the Mekong, the Nu River and the Brahmaputra in the West Route, China keeps the project unilateral without seeking input from the affected countries. As a study has analysed, any physical resistance by these countries would be deemed as military aggression, forcing them to comply so as not to compromise regional peace and water sovereignty. 

While the West Route is currently in its planning stage, there is already tension and mistrust by residents. In late 2017, the ‘Red Flag River Project’ – a proposal by Chinese scientists and engineers to divert Himalayan glacial water to China’s arid West – created panic among India’s media, since Himalayan glacier melt is an important source of water for two of India’s most important rivers. Although the project was found to be fraudulent , India’s response illustrated its mistrust of China’s use of the region’s water resources.

Territorial issues have existed since the Sino-Indian War in 1962, exacerbated in recent times by China’s mining operations in India’s Lhunze county and rapid military buildup in Ladakh. By August 2019, the two countries had held 21 rounds of Special Representative talks concerning boundary conflicts. The large-scale water diversion project, which involves shared natural resources, may stoke future disputes. 

China’s SNWTP is at best a short-term solution, preventing the government from correcting man-made problems and creating new challenges in the intra- and international community. Experts suggest alternative solutions, such as proper utilisation of local water resources through raising the water price and improving water management bodies. 

Featured image by: Boris Kasimov

You might also like: Top 5 Environmental Issues in China in 2022

About the Author

Ka Ching Leung

15 Biggest Environmental Problems of 2024

Water Shortage: Causes and Effects

What Are the Countries Most Prepared for Climate Change?

Hand-picked stories weekly or monthly. We promise, no spam!

• Comments This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Boost this article By donating us $100, $50 or subscribe to Boosting $10/month – we can get this article and others in front of tens of thousands of specially targeted readers. This targeted Boosting – helps us to reach wider audiences – aiming to convince the unconvinced, to inform the uninformed, to enlighten the dogmatic.

Try AI-powered search

What if water shortages destabilise China?

The painfully unequal distribution of water in china reawakens intra-regional resentments not seen in decades. an imagined scenario from 2050.

Your browser does not support the <audio> element.

Editor’s note: Each of these climate-change articles is fiction, but grounded in historical fact and real science. The year, concentration of carbon dioxide and average temperature rise (above pre-industrial average) are shown for each one. The scenarios do not present a unified narrative but are set in different worlds, with a range of climate sensitivities, on different emissions pathways

T HE DEADLY heatwave that has gripped Asia for five months has had many unexpected consequences. One of the more surprising has been Chinese political and business leaders feuding, semi-publicly, about the unequal way China’s water is shared out. This was supposed to be a quiet year for Communist Party rulers, who spent 2049 noisily celebrating their regime’s 100th anniversary. Instead they are on high alert.

The spark for the current political crisis was the success of “Yu the Great”, a two-hour documentary about a nobleman whose flood-fighting genius saw him named emperor 4,000 years ago. The film was watched more than 4bn times before censors cracked its cryptomorphic packaging. Its producer and narrator, one of China’s richest technology magnates, was detained last month in Shenzhen and has not been seen since.

The film was understood by many viewers as a coded complaint about chronic water shortages that have blighted China in recent years, despite ever-larger investments in dams, flood-defence barriers and desalination plants, and campaigns to move millions of people from one side of the country to the other.

In the documentary, Yu the Great is praised for realising that floods cannot be defeated with man-made barriers—the failed approach repeatedly tried by his own father, Lord Gun—but must be harnessed and guided, by building channels. Viewers could not fail to grasp that stubborn, purblind Gun is a proxy for China’s ageing rulers, who draw their authority from the military high command and from Xi Jinping, the country’s unseen and silent 97-year-old paramount leader.

Archeologists have found no physical traces of Yu the Great, but that is not the point. Worshipped for centuries as a deity, Yu is hailed in the documentary as a sort of philosopher king, who bound nine provinces into a single empire by carefully balancing the needs of each. That, too, is a complaint about regional inequalities that have left present-day China a rather resentful, unhappy place. Only a few regions, such as western Sichuan and northern Yunnan, have seen agricultural productivity gains. Climate change has turned much of northern China into an arid semi-desert. The Hai, Liao and Yellow rivers, which once watered great tracts of the North China Plain, the country’s breadbasket, run dry each summer. Farther south, even tributaries of the mighty Yangzi, such as the Han river, flow too slowly in the summer to flush away toxic algal blooms.

In contrast the most southerly provinces, including the high-tech powerhouse of Guangdong, seesaw between having either too much water or not enough. The south is lashed by frequent super-typhoons and flash floods, while storm surges and landslides have destroyed multi-billion-dollar industrial zones and housing developments around the Greater Bay Area, a sprawling, sweltering, permanently gridlocked megalopolis that is home to 120m people, made up of such formerly separate cities as Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Hong Kong. At other times, scorching temperatures have left the south gripped by extended droughts.

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 isolationist America said that it would no longer defend it, the island is a harshly policed shadow of its former self. A lack of water has thwarted plans to bring over more mainland settlers.

At emergency global summits to debate climate change, China has talked about playing a leading role as a responsible great power. It is true that it has invested massively in renewable energy. But powerful economic interests have made China cautious. When it comes to dismantling coal-fired power plants, or closing carbon-spewing factories built by Chinese firms in Asia and Africa, China has consistently kept an eye on what rival powers are doing. It has matched American efforts and commitments on greenhouse-gas emissions, but not gone further. In the words of a European diplomat: “China does not do altruism. The approach is to seek maximum credit for minimum effort.”

When it comes to regional diplomacy, China has taken a more conciliatory stance, at least where its largest neighbours are concerned. Swallowing traditional doubts about Chinese settlers overrunning its sparsely peopled east, Russia has worked with China to exploit Arctic sea lanes that are now ice-free for much of the summer. Protective Russian and Chinese icebreakers now lead convoys of oil tankers heading eastward to China, and of container ships steaming westward to European markets. Six states that border the Arctic—Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden—have all seen Chinese cargo and cruise ships bring lucrative business to once-sleepy northern ports, tempering domestic political opposition to China’s presence in the high North.

China’s relations with India have been patched up and water-sharing treaties signed between the two nuclear powers, as glaciers high in the Himalaya melt at a dangerous rate. Smaller neighbours have been less fortunate. Brushing aside complaints from Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam, China has hoarded water behind its dams in the upper reaches of the Mekong and other vital rivers, then bought an uneasy peace by selling neighbours cheap electricity from those dams.

At home in China, government scientists do not dispute the dangers posed by man-made global warming. But the response of the Communist Party has been to pour more concrete and to put still more faith in state planning and social controls. Engineering works intended to tame nature and redistribute water, in a country where 80% of it is found in the south, have been a pillar of Communist rule since the days of Mao Zedong. Chinese officials cited Mao’s observation from 1953—“Water is abundant in the south and scarce in the north, so why not borrow a little from the south?”—in 2014 as a giant series of canals and pumping stations, the South to North Water Diversion Project ( SNWDP ), began carrying water from the Yangzi river system to Beijing and other parched northern cities.

Counting every drop

In 2035, with water in ever-shorter supply, China conducted its first Water Census, estimating available water resources per resident of each city and county. Those places with plenty were colour-coded green. Areas suffering from water stress were given an orange code, while those with dangerously few resources were coloured red. The populations of arid, red-coded places may not grow, by law. In practice, many arid areas have emptied, as locals realised no new government funds would be forthcoming for roads, schools or hospitals or to support economic development.

At first, many Chinese did not pay close attention, because a first wave of forced relocations disproportionately affected ethnic minorities living in western regions. In all, perhaps 8m members of the Uighur, Kazakh, Hui and Mongol minorities have now moved from red-coded areas. Some ended up as workers in high-walled factories run with paramilitary discipline. Others, carrying identity cards branding them as migrants from “arid” areas, have suffered discrimination in their new homes. These environmental migrants—though China rejects that label—often struggle to register children in schools or access public services.

Wider public opinion began to sour on the Water Census when a second survey, completed in 2042, handed arid, red-coded identity cards to millions of Chinese from the majority Han ethnic group, triggering a fresh wave of coerced relocations. Farmers from northern and central provinces were obliged to sign family plots of land over to the government in exchange for subsidies to help them start new lives in green-coded regions where the population is allowed to grow. China’s rural areas are ageing rapidly, though, and many farmers said they were too old to move. Impatient with such talk, officials in some red-coded villages are accused of forcefully moving “retired” farmers to hastily built housing blocks.

Water has caused trouble in Hong Kong, the former British colony that has been under strict political supervision since anti-government demonstrations in 2019. Defying local police and mainland security agents, environmental activists staged a string of lightning protests in the late 2030s to block the construction of a nuclear-powered desalination plant, one of dozens being built along the coast. Not only was the plant built but, in a show of force, it was opened in 2047 to mark Hong Kong’s formal absorption into Guangdong province, 50 years after the handover.

The latest Water Census, made public this year, prompted rage on Chinese social media when it emerged that Beijing and its nearby administrative annexe of Xiong’an, a new “smart city” built at the behest of President Xi, both enjoy green codes on the basis of projected deliveries of water from the SNWDP . That is a convenient fiction. In reality the scheme has repeatedly missed its delivery targets as droughts have hit the Yangzi basin. According to government statistics leaked to a news outlet in Guangdong, Xiong’an is desperately short of water. Yet because Mr Xi’s prestige is at stake, its population is still being allowed to grow.

To the central government, it is a special provocation that the leaked Xiong’an water statistics emerged in Guangdong, a wealthy, self-confident province with a mutinous history. The furious response of leaders in Beijing to “Yu the Great” is in part explained by the filmmaker’s close connections to powerful southern politicians. Millions on social media posted images of Yu the Great and his mausoleum near the eastern city of Shaoxing. When those were banned they began sharing pictures of the Zhong Hai and Nan Hai, ornamental lakes inside the party leadership compound in Beijing, labelled “sweet waters”.

Such expressions of grievance may seem somewhat arcane. But in a closely watched surveillance state those voicing them are taking real risks, and their anger should not be ignored. The painfully unequal distribution of water in modern China is reawakening intra-regional resentments not seen for more than a century. Outsiders have spent years speculating what China might do about climate change. Now they are asking: what might climate change do to China? ■

For more coverage of climate change, register for The Climate Issue, our fortnightly newsletter , or visit our climate-change hub

This article appeared in the The World If section of the print edition under the headline “Trickle-down policies”

From the July 2nd 2020 edition

Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents

More from The World If

What if nuclear power had taken off in the 1970s?

How would the world look today if more countries had adopted nuclear power after the 1973 oil crisis? A look back on an alternative history from a rather different 2020

What if mammoths are brought back from extinction?

Could recreating mammoths help curb global warming?

What if technology tracked all carbon emissions?

Could governments use smartphones to monitor citizens’ carbon emissions? An imagined scenario from 2030

What if aviation doesn’t recover from covid-19?

How the pandemic transformed the travel industry. An imagined scenario from May 2022

What if carbon removal becomes the new Big Oil?

One giant industry emerges as another declines. An imagined scenario from 2050

What if climate activists turn to terrorism?

Protesters against climate change have not resorted to terrorism to advance their cause. This scenario from 2031 imagines what would happen if they did

• Foreign Affairs
• CFR Education
• Newsletters

• Climate Change

Global Climate Agreements: Successes and Failures

Backgrounder by Lindsay Maizland December 5, 2023 Renewing America

• Defense & Security
• Diplomacy & International Institutions
• Energy & Environment
• Human Rights
• Politics & Government
• Social Issues

Myanmar’s Troubled History

Backgrounder by Lindsay Maizland January 31, 2022

• Europe & Eurasia
• Global Commons
• Middle East & North Africa
• Sub-Saharan Africa

How Tobacco Laws Could Help Close the Racial Gap on Cancer

Interactive by Olivia Angelino, Thomas J. Bollyky , Elle Ruggiero and Isabella Turilli February 1, 2023 Global Health Program

• Backgrounders
• Special Projects

Nonproliferation, Arms Control, and Disarmament

CFR Welcomes Lori Esposito Murray

July 25, 2024

• Centers & Programs
• Books & Reports
• Independent Task Force Program
• Fellowships

Oil and Petroleum Products

Academic Webinar: The Geopolitics of Oil

Webinar with Carolyn Kissane and Irina A. Faskianos April 12, 2023

• Students and Educators
• State & Local Officials
• Religion Leaders
• Local Journalists

NATO's Future: Enlarged and More European?

Virtual Event with Emma M. Ashford, Michael R. Carpenter, Camille Grand, Thomas Wright, Liana Fix and Charles A. Kupchan June 25, 2024 Europe Program

• Lectureship Series
• Webinars & Conference Calls
• Member Login

China’s Fight Against Climate Change and Environmental Degradation

• China is the world’s top emitter, producing more than a quarter of the world’s annual greenhouse gas emissions, which contribute to climate change.
• It pledged to cut emissions under the Paris Agreement, reduce coal use, and invest in renewable energy. But its Belt and Road Initiative still finances coal-fired power plants abroad. 
• Air pollution, water scarcity, and soil contamination remain threats to the health and livelihoods of China’s people, increasing dissatisfaction with the government.

Introduction

China’s environmental crisis, the result of decades of rapid industrialization, not only threatens the health and livelihoods of the country’s 1.4 billion people but also the global fight against climate change. As the world’s largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in recent years, China suffers from notoriously bad air pollution. Its carbon-intensive industries have caused additional environmental challenges, including water scarcity and soil contamination. And, like the rest of the world, China will face increasingly harsh consequences of climate change in the coming decades, including flooding and droughts. 

In response, Beijing has implemented policies to curb emissions and stem further degradation, such as by signing the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate and pledging to be carbon neutral by 2060. However, following through won’t be easy, experts say, as the government struggles to maintain economic growth; ease public discontent; and overcome tensions with the United States, the second-largest emitter.

How high are China’s greenhouse gas emissions?

• Energy and Environment
• Energy and Climate Policy
• Renewable Energy

China’s economic rise—national gross domestic product (GDP) grew 10 percent on average each year for more than a decade—has greatly accelerated its emissions. In the past ten years, China has emitted more greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, per year than any other country in the world. It surpassed the United States as the top emitter in 2005, according to Climate Watch. (Emissions per capita in the United States are still more than double those in China.)

Daily News Brief

A summary of global news developments with cfr analysis delivered to your inbox each morning.  weekdays., the world this week, a weekly digest of the latest from cfr on the biggest foreign policy stories of the week, featuring briefs, opinions, and explainers. every friday., think global health.

A curation of original analyses, data visualizations, and commentaries, examining the debates and efforts to improve health worldwide.  Weekly.

Coal, which makes up nearly two-thirds of China’s energy consumption, is largely to blame. The country is the world’s largest coal producer and accounts for about half of coal consumed globally . The government banned the construction of new coal-fired power plants in 2016, and coal use appeared to decline. However, when the ban expired in 2018, construction of new plants ramped up again. In 2020, China built over three times more [PDF] new coal-power capacity than the rest of the world combined, according to Global Energy Monitor and the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air. 

China’s staggering pace of urbanization has also contributed. Urbanization increases energy demands to power new manufacturing and industrial centers, and construction of these centers relies on high energy–consuming products such as cement and steel. Another contributor is the increase in cars on the road: In 2018, people in China owned 240 million vehicles , up from about 27 million in 2004.

Internationally, China is the largest financier of fossil fuel infrastructure. Through its massive Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China has built or is planning to build hundreds of coal-fired power plants in countries around the world. More than 60 percent of BRI-specific energy financing has gone toward nonrenewable resources. Greenhouse gas emissions in more than a dozen BRI countries have soared. Researchers found in 2019 that BRI could drive the global average temperature to increase by 2.7°C , significantly higher than the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5°C.

How is climate change expected to affect China?

Like the rest of the world, China will increasingly suffer over the next few decades from the effects of climate change, which include sea-level rise, stronger storms, and more intense heat waves. China’s average temperature and sea levels have risen faster than the global average, according to a 2020 report from China’s National Climate Center. 

Some of China’s coastal cities, such as Shanghai, could be submerged if the global average temperature continues to rise. An estimated forty-three million people in China live on land that could be underwater by the end of the century if the global average temperature rises by 2°C. 

Additionally, experts predict that China will experience more frequent extreme weather events, such as heavy rainfall. Every year, natural disasters kill hundreds of Chinese people and destroy millions of acres of crops. As temperatures rise, China’s glaciers will continue to melt at an alarming rate, which will likely lead to more devastating floods. Extreme heat events and droughts will also become more common. 

What is China doing to reduce its emissions?

President Xi Jinping has recognized climate change as one of his administration’s top concerns, and Beijing has made a variety of pledges to address it. These include:

• achieving carbon neutrality by 2060;
• reaching peak carbon dioxide emissions before 2030;
• having renewable energy sources account for 25 percent of total energy consumption by 2030; 
• reducing carbon intensity, or the amount of carbon emitted per unit of GDP, by more than 65 percent by 2030;
• installing enough solar and wind power generators to have a combined capacity of 1.2 billion kilowatts by 2030; and,
• boosting forest coverage by around six billion cubic meters by 2030.

However, experts say many of these goals aren’t ambitious enough and point out that they don’t align with each other or with the Paris Agreement. For example, China would need to reach peak emissions by 2025 at the latest to be in line with the Paris accord’s goal.

Transitioning from coal to renewable energy is critical to China’s efforts, and the country has already made some progress. In 2019, renewables accounted for nearly 15 percent of China’s energy mix, compared to 7 percent a decade earlier. China has used hydropower for years, and it is installing more solar panels and wind power generators as the world’s leading manufacturer of those technologies. It is also boosting its nuclear power capacity , with seventeen reactors under construction as of mid-2021. Moreover, Beijing and some provinces are incentivizing electric vehicle use. In 2020, 1.37 million so-called new energy vehicles—which include battery electric, plug-in hybrid, and hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles—were sold in China, a nearly 11 percent increase from the previous year. Still, experts point out that the vast majority of electricity for such vehicles is produced with fossil fuels. 

Like the European Union and several other countries, China is working to launch a national emissions trading scheme, which would force polluters to pay for environmental harm and thus incentivize them to reduce their emissions. It would initially focus on coal- and gas-fired power plants . However, the rollout has been delayed since the scheme was first announced in 2017, and many details remain unclear.

Even if China reaches its domestic goals, its financing of nonrenewable energy projects abroad through BRI could make it “much harder for the planet to curb climate change,” says American University’s Judith Shapiro, coauthor of the book China Goes Green: Coercive Environmentalism for a Troubled Planet . Beijing has attempted to make BRI more environmentally sustainable by announcing environmental standards, but so far these have only been voluntary.

How has China cooperated with the rest of the world on climate change?

China only recently started actively helping to formulate global responses to climate change. For decades, China resisted making commitments under the UN framework. Chinese diplomats argued that China shouldn’t have to sacrifice its economic development for environmental protection and that developed countries, such as the United States, should carry more of the burden because they were able to grow their economies without limitations.

As climate change and environmental degradation became a top priority for the Chinese government, it participated more in global climate talks, eventually becoming “ a leader on climate change ,” write CFR Fellows Yanzhong Huang and Joshua Kurlantzick. In 2016, China announced its participation in the Paris Agreement, and in the years since, it has ramped up its commitments.

China has been open to working with other countries. Environmental ministers from Japan and South Korea, whose governments have expressed concerns about smog and acid rain that crosses their countries’ borders from China, have held yearly meetings with their Chinese counterparts. The European Union agreed to support China’s implementation of its emissions trading scheme. India, the world’s third-largest emitter, has signed climate agreements with China, but heightened tensions in 2020–21 raised doubts about future collaboration.

Have China and the United States worked together?

Despite deep-seated political and economic tensions, the rivals have worked together in the past and experts see opportunities for future cooperation. Under the Barack Obama administration, the countries expanded collaboration among Chinese and American companies, scientists, and experts on clean energy and carbon-capture technologies. In 2014, they jointly announced commitments to reduce emissions. 

Much of that cooperation stopped under President Donald Trump, who took a confrontational stance toward Beijing and questioned the science of climate change . 

President Joe Biden, who has committed to reducing U.S. emissions and restoring American leadership on climate change, has said engagement with China is essential. In April 2021, during a visit to Shanghai by Biden’s climate envoy, John Kerry, the two countries agreed to make more ambitious pledges under the Paris accord. Days later, Xi participated in a U.S.-hosted virtual climate summit. At the same time, the Biden administration has emphasized competition with Beijing, including aims to boost U.S. clean energy industries in response to China’s dominance in that area.

What other environmental challenges does China face?

Carbon-intensive industries often harm the environment in additional ways. Climate change can further exacerbate environmental challenges, including air pollution, water scarcity, and desertification.

Air pollution . Increased public awareness of China’s notoriously low air quality in the past decade—especially after Beijing suffered a prolonged bout of smog in 2013 that was so severe that citizens dubbed it an “airpocalypse”—has sparked government action. A plan released later in 2013 ordered cities to lower concentrations of tiny hazardous particles known as PM2.5 and directed local governments to implement tougher controls on pollution and coal use. As a result, much of China has seen a significant drop in air pollution. But many regions continue to experience stretches of extreme pollution, and hundreds of mostly northern cities still suffer from high levels of PM2.5.

Water insecurity . China is home to about 20 percent of the world’s population but only 7 percent of its freshwater sources. Overuse has led to severe shortages , and industry along China’s major water sources has polluted supplies. Construction of hydropower dams along major rivers has also damaged ecosystems. The government released a plan in 2015 for preventing water pollution that included placing controls on polluting industries. The quality of surface waters—bodies such as lakes, rivers, and streams— has since improved . However, groundwater continues to fall short of targets, with more than 80 percent categorized as “bad to very bad.” 

Desertification. More than one-quarter of China’s arable land is becoming desert due to the water crisis, negligent farming practices, overgrazing, and the effects of climate change. The government has responded by planting billions of trees, among other measures to increase vegetation. Desertified land is now shrinking on average by nearly one thousand square miles each year, according to government figures.

Soil pollution . The government estimated in 2014 that nearly one-fifth of arable land is contaminated. This has consequences for China’s food security: An estimated 12 million tons of the 664 million tons of grain produced annually are polluted by heavy metals. Chemical factories and other industrial sites are mainly to blame, but trash, electronic waste, rare-earth-metal mining , overuse of pesticides, and contaminated water also contribute. In 2019, China’s first comprehensive law to prevent soil pollution took effect, requiring polluters to limit their output or pay for contamination. Two years later, China banned the import of all waste from other countries. 

Nuclear waste. China has not suffered a nuclear accident in its three decades of operating nuclear power plants, but some experts are concerned [PDF] that the risk will rise as the country ramps up new construction and as existing plants age. 

How does pollution affect China’s population? 

Pollution of the air, water, and soil has major consequences for the health and livelihoods of China’s massive population. It has been linked to acute and chronic disease and preventable death. 

“China cannot regain its greatness in the world if its people continue to breathe polluted air, drink toxic water, and eat tainted food.”

Air pollution contributes to an estimated 1.1 million premature deaths in China annually. Epidemiological studies conducted since the 1980s suggest that poor air quality in northern Chinese cities causes significant health complications [PDF], including respiratory, cardiovascular, and cerebrovascular diseases. An estimated sixty thousand people  in China die of illnesses caused by water pollution every year.

Moreover, environmental issues cost the economy billions of dollars each year, with some recent estimates putting the toll at up to 10 percent of GDP. The Ministry of Ecology and Environment calculated the cost of pollution to be around 1.5 trillion RMB ($227 billion), or roughly 3.5 percent of GDP, in 2010. (The ministry only releases such figures intermittently.) 

Is this a threat to the Chinese Communist Party? 

CFR’s Huang argues in his book Toxic Politics: China’s Environmental Health Crisis and Its Challenge to the Chinese State that pollution and environmental degradation are among the “biggest obstacles to China’s future economic growth and political stability.” The government’s failure to meaningfully address pollution could lead citizens to question the legitimacy of China’s leaders and political system, he writes. 

Indeed, as public awareness of environmental degradation has increased over the past two decades, public dissatisfaction and the number of petitions and protests have grown. Citizens have organized hundreds of protests , including in the cities of Guangdong, Kunming, Shanghai, and Wuhan. In 2013, the number of “ abrupt environmental incidents ,” including protests, rose to 712, a 31 percent jump from the previous year. Citizen petitions related to environmental issues increased from 1.05 million in 2011 to 1.77 million in 2015.

Environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have pushed the government to confront problems. Thousands of these groups—domestically based but often working with foreign counterparts—have advocated for transparency, investigated suspected corruption, and led grassroots campaigns. They have had some success , taking advantage of a 2015 law that made it easier to file cases against polluters. 

But the Chinese Communist Party fears activism could catalyze democratic social change, and so has constrained the efforts of organizations, activists, and grassroots movements. For example, a 2016 law made it harder for international NGOs to work in China. Under Xi, the government has shown more resolve to crack down on public dissent , including by arresting activists and censoring documentaries and social media commentary.

The government’s inability to curb pollution could damage China’s international standing, experts say. “China cannot regain its greatness in the world if its people continue to breathe polluted air, drink toxic water, and eat tainted food,” writes Huang.

Recommended Resources

CFR’s Yanzhong Huang discusses how China’s environmental crisis is harming public health and undermining the Chinese government in his book Toxic Politics : China’s Environmental Health Crisis and Its Challenge to the Chinese State .

David Sandalow’s Guide to Chinese Climate Policy tracks the Chinese government’s responses to climate change.

For CFR’s Internationalist blog, Jennifer Hillman and Alex Tippett unpack the climate consequences of BRI .

Scott Malcomson explains in Foreign Affairs how China became the world’s leader in green energy .

This CFR Backgrounder looks at the successes and failures of global climate agreements .

The Climate Action Tracker lays out China’s commitments under the Paris Agreement and examines their effectiveness.

Eleanor Albert and Beina Xu contributed to this Backgrounder.

Corrections: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated the number of electric vehicles sold in 2019. This error was fixed on July 28, 2021. A previous version of the graphic on global carbon emissions incorrectly listed the unit as metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. This error was fixed on May 27, 2021.

• How has China cooperated with other countries?

More From Our Experts

How Will the EU Elections Results Change Europe?

In Brief by Liana Fix June 10, 2024 Europe Program

Iran Attack Means an Even Tougher Balancing Act for the U.S. in the Middle East

In Brief by Steven A. Cook April 14, 2024 Middle East Program

Iran Attacks on Israel Spur Escalation Concerns

In Brief by Ray Takeyh April 14, 2024 Middle East Program

Top Stories on CFR

Taiwan’s Latest Defense Budget Risks Falling Further Behind China

Blog Post by David Sacks August 9, 2024 Asia Unbound

United States

The U.S. Supreme Court’s Chevron Deference Ruling Will Disrupt Climate Policy

Expert Brief by Alice C. Hill August 7, 2024

Middle East and North Africa

Mapping the Growing U.S. Military Presence in the Middle East

Article by Jonathan Masters and Will Merrow August 6, 2024

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

• View all journals
• Explore content
• About the journal
• Publish with us
• Sign up for alerts
• Published: 16 February 2011

China's water crisis needs more than words

• Chaoqing Yu  

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

2123 Accesses

98 Citations

14 Altmetric

Metrics details

• Developing world

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.

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Additional information

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]

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article.

Yu, C. China's water crisis needs more than words. Nature 470 , 307 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/470307a

Download citation

Published : 16 February 2011

Issue Date : 17 February 2011

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1038/470307a

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

This article is cited by

Ammi an gge biplot analysis of grain yield for drought-tolerant maize hybrid selection in inner mongolia.

Scientific Reports (2023)

Groundwater quality assessment and hydrogeochemical processes in typical watersheds in Zhangjiakou region, northern China

• Wanjun Jiang
• Yizhi Sheng
• Sheming Chen

Environmental Science and Pollution Research (2022)

Characteristics and progress of land use/cover change research during 1990–2018

• Chunyang He
• Jinxi Zhang
• Qingxu Huang

Journal of Geographical Sciences (2022)

Using high-throughput multiple optical phenotyping to decipher the genetic architecture of maize drought tolerance

• Mingqiu Dai

Genome Biology (2021)

Evaluating water resource sustainability from the perspective of water resource carrying capacity, a case study of the Yongding River watershed in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, China

• Mingdong Sun

Environmental Science and Pollution Research (2020)

Quick links

• Explore articles by subject
• Guide to authors
• Editorial policies

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

As climate change hits, China weighs new water megaprojects

• Medium Text

• China signals surge in water spending as climate risks mount
• Water investment up 44% in 2022; 15% in Q1 this year
• Demand-side measures could prove more effective -experts

'CHAIN REACTIONS'

Sign up here.

Reporting by David Stanway. Editing by Gerry Doyle

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. , opens new tab

Thomson Reuters

Reports on climate and environmental topics, including the state of the oceans and the long transition to clean energy. Spent 21 years in China as a correspondent covering energy, mining, the country's war on pollution and the growing impact of climate change on cities and ecosystems, as well as the outbreak and origins of COVID-19.

Trump loses third bid for judge to step aside in hush money case

A New York judge declined for a third time to step aside from the case in which Donald Trump was convicted of charges involving hush money paid to a porn star, dismissing the former U.S. president's claim of conflict of interest related to political consultancy work by the judge's daughter.

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.

© Copyright 2024 Ready for Climate

Read The Diplomat , Know The Asia-Pacific

• Central Asia
• Southeast Asia

Environment

• Asia Defense
• China Power
• Crossroads Asia
• Flashpoints
• Pacific Money
• Tokyo Report
• Trans-Pacific View

Photo Essays

• Write for Us
• Subscriptions

Are ‘Water Wars’ Coming to Asia?

Recent features.

Beyond Tariffs: Unveiling the Geopolitics of Electric Vehicles Through Supply Chains

In Photos: Bangladesh After Hasina Fled

First Known Survivor of China’s Forced Organ Harvesting Speaks Out 

Nuclear Shadows Over South Asia: Strategic Instabilities in the China-India-Pakistan Triad

Securing America’s Critical Minerals: A Policy Priority Conundrum

The Geopolitics of Cambodia’s Funan Techo Canal

The Killing of Dawa Khan Menapal and the Fall of Afghanistan’s Republic

How Bangladesh’s Quota Reform Protest Turned Into a Mass Uprising Against a ‘Killer Government’  

Jammu and Kashmir: Five Years After the Abrogation of Its Autonomy

A Grand Coalition and a New Era in Mongolia

Dealing With China Should Be a Key Priority for the New EU Leadership

The US CHIPS Act, 2 Years Later

Features  |  environment  |  east asia  |  southeast asia.

Climate change-induced water loss in the Tibetan Plateau further challenges water security from Central to Southeast Asia.

A recently published study by a team of scientists from the University of Texas in Austin, Penn State, and Tsinghua University in Nature climate change journal found that terrestrial water storage (TWS) in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in China is expected to sustain significant net declines by 2060. The study analyzed seven river basin systems – the Amu Darya, Indus, Ganges-Brahmaputra, Salween-Mekong, Yangtze, and Yellow river basins – and found that the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, also known as Asia’s “water tower” or “the roof of the world,” is threatened by climate change-induced water loss.

As the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau’s glacier melt and mountain springs provide a significant supply of water flowing out of China to many downstream countries in Asia, this study reinforces that climate change effects are exacerbating water insecurity in Asia. While the water challenges in Asia are due in part to poor water management, they are made worse by other pressures. These include rapid population growth, urbanization, growing water demands, upstream-downstream disputes, and geopolitical tensions over water resources. To avoid further water insecurity concerns and fears of a “water war” or water crisis, governments in Asia should rethink their approach to water security by improving their management of water resources.

Climate Change

In recent decades, climate change has caused a severe depletion in TWS (surface and subsurface water), which is essential in determining water availability. Water storage is affected by climate change impacts (such as climate change-induced extreme weather events) and is linked to global sea-level rise.

According to the Nature paper’s authors, the volume of TWS lost annually is 15.8 gigatons in some parts of the Tibetan Plateau, home of the Himalayas , the world’s tallest mountain range. This region is characterized by high elevation, periglacial processes, and an arid and cold continental climate. Based on this information, the authors predict that under a moderate carbon emissions scenario, by 2050, the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau may experience a net loss of approximately 230 gigatons of TWS.

While the total water demand in the downstream of some river basins (the Ganges-Brahmaputra, Salween-Mekong, and Yangtze) can be met using other factors, this is not the case for the Amu Darya and Indus river basins. The research found that the Amu Darya basin – which originates in the Pamir Mountains and supplies water to Afghanistan and Central Asia – will see a 119 percent decline in water-supply capacity. Similarly, the Indus basin – which originates in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau and supplies water to northern India and Pakistan – is projected to undergo a 79 percent reduction in water-supply capacity.

The paper adds to a growing body of literature that emphasizes global water insecurity concerns, particularly in Asia. The global demand for freshwater is skyrocketing while supply becomes more uncertain. At present, estimates suggest that one out of three people worldwide – more than a billion – do not have access to safe drinking water. In addition,  2.2 billion people globally do not have safely managed drinking water services.

According to the United Nations, half of countries worldwide will face water shortages or stress by 2025. By then, nearly 1.8 billion people will live in areas with absolute water scarcity, while two-thirds of the world population could face water-stressed conditions. Furthermore, by 2050, as much as 75 percent of the global population may be affected by water scarcity. For instance, the U.N. estimates that between 4.8 to 5.7 billion people could live in areas with water shortages for at least one month a year by 2050.

Water and water-related challenges are notably severe in Asia. While Asia is home to more than 50 percent of the global population, it has less freshwater – 3,920 cubic meters per person per year – than other continents, aside from Antarctica.

In the case of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the region has abundant water resources with low utilization rates. As the headwater of 10 major river systems filling river basins in Asia, over 1.35 billion people – around 20 percent of the world’s population – depend on rivers originating in China’s Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. However, the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau has been considerably impacted by climate change. This includes increases in the annual air temperature by 0.32 degrees Celsius per decade between 1961 and 2017 and significant groundwater depletion. Given the considerable reduction in the size of the region’s glaciers , this makes the decline in TWS even more concerning.

At the same time, Asia is facing considerable challenges from additional pressures. Nearly two-thirds of the global population growth is occurring in Asia: by 2050, the continent’s population is projected to grow to 5.26 billion by 2050. While the rural population in Asia will remain almost the same between now and 2025 , the urban population will soar by an enormous 60 percent. Given such rapid rates of population growth and urbanization, with concomitant water demands , this will inevitably place greater stress on Asia’s water resources .

The Geopolitics of Water

Further complicating water security issues, China, the “upstream superpower” of many of Asia’s longest and most important rivers and regional hydro-hegemon, does not have an independent transboundary river policy. Instead, the management of transnational water resources falls under the much broader framework of foreign relations with the many various downstream countries.

Given China’s distrust of multilateral frameworks to resolve international disputes , Beijing has not signed a water-sharing with its neighbors or an international transboundary-governing water treaty , causing concern in the downstream region over the potential for conflict over access to and control of shared water resources. Some of China’s neighbors have not signed these agreements either.

Complicating matters, China’s major approach to water challenges has been engineering-focused, as demonstrated by its construction of mega hydro-infrastructure such as hydropower dams. Hydropower dams can have an enormous impact on water supply by affecting river flow to the downstream region. China has built many hydropower dams on major transnational rivers, both within Chinese territory and downstream, as part of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). However, China’s dam-building activities on the upper headwaters of various transboundary rivers, including major international rivers such as the Brahmaputra , Mekong, and Salween, have caused significant concern along with ecological, socioeconomic, and environmental damage in the downstream region . This consequently puts further pressure on a region that is already water-stressed.

For instance, the Stimson Center, in a 2020 report , linked China’s dam management on the upper Mekong to significant changes in water levels downstream. According to the report, the hydropower dams held back water to such an extent that they prevented the annual monsoon-drive rise in river level at Chiang Saen, Thailand, in 2019. This was the first time this had happened since the establishment of modern records.

The increase in hydropower dams has thus increased tension between China and the various downstream countries. The downstream region is becoming increasingly concerned by the potential threat of China using hydropower dams to leave its neighbors without adequate water supply or, in the case of a dispute or conflict, “turning the tap off” to the downstream. In response to such growing concerns and the apparent threat of China’s proposed 60 gigawatt “super” dam , India has announced it is considering building its own 10-gigawatt hydropower dam in a remote eastern state.

At the same time, various inter-basin project proposals have caused alarm in the downstream region. One project proposal, in particular, the Red Flag River concept, aims to annually divert 60 billion cubic meters from the major rivers of the ecologically fragile Qinghai-Tibet Plateau to arid Xinjiang and other parts of northwest China. This would impact three transnational rivers (the Mekong, Salween, and Brahmaputra). Chinese scholars believe that water resources from the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau – despite the decrease in quantity since the 1960s – may encourage the regional development of northwestern China.

For the downstream region, particularly India and Vietnam, the project proposal has raised additional concerns about water scarcity and potential growing competition between the downstream area for access to and control water resources.

Are “Water Wars” on the Agenda?

There has been much speculation over the possibility of water wars, driven partly by the media and sensationalist headlines. Further linking water and conflict, various politicians and high-ranking officials from leading international organizations have made statements about the looming specter of water wars, including former U.N. Secretaries General Kofi Annan , Ban Ki-moon , and Boutros Boutros-Ghali . Think tanks and non-profit organizations have also identified the risks associated with water crises, such as political and socioeconomic instability, especially in the case of transboundary water basins. In 2015, the 10th global risk report from the World Economic Forum (WEF) ranked water crises first among global risks.

More recently, an unclassified memo from the U.S. National Intelligence Council (NIC) in July 2020 examined global water security over the next 30 years. The memo noted that without sufficient water, countries will experience a decline in socioeconomic, political, and public health, as well as gross domestic production, made worse by climate change effects. The U.S. NIC Global Trends 2025 report also predicted that “cooperation to manage changing water resources is likely to become more difficult within and between states” in Asia and the Middle East.

While this may appear incredibly worrisome, the “water wars” narrative has also been refuted. Various academics have pointed out that going to access to water is not usually the primary reason for war . Other academics have noted that water conflict can coexist at different variations of intensity and scales alongside different forms of cooperation .

In such circumstances, countries should rethink their approaches to water security to meet increased water demand and avoid further concerns of water crises . Specifically, governments must recognize that improving water management practices is necessary not only to decrease water demand but also to improve water quality. Although the downstream region may prefer to construct mega hydro-engineering projects, they should also consider the (greater) use of alternative water supply sources (e.g. treated wastewater and desalination) for both non-potable and potable uses. They may also consider implementing water demand management practices (such as smart meters and other technologies) and improved access to financing along with the implementation of nature-based solutions .

Asia’s water and water-related challenges are set to increase in the coming decades. As the recent study in Nature notes, the TWS is expected to continue to decline, especially for the Amu Darya and Indus river basins, the latter of which begins in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. The challenges posed by water insecurity and poor water management in Asia will also continue to worsen due to the effects of climate change. For the downstream region, this adds another challenge to the existing concerns over water management and water availability, made worse by China’s dam-building agenda .

While the “water wars” narrative may lack historical evidence , it is undeniable that interlinked concerns of rapid population growth and urbanization combined with growing demands for water further challenge the poor water management in the countries. Climate change impacts will further exacerbate these significant concerns, and in such a context, a “water war” or “water crisis” cannot be ruled out. To avoid additional water challenges and to ensure water security, countries must improve water management alongside the implementation of water demand management methods.

Nomads, Mountains, and Militarization in the Tibetan Plateau

By scott ezell.

Transboundary Water Governance is a Regional Security Issue in Asia

By genevieve donnellon-may and zhang hongzhou.

Are ‘Sponge Cities’ the Answer to Shenzhen’s Water Scarcity? 

By genevieve donnellon-may and guangtao fu.

China’s Control of the Mekong

By philip citowicki.

By Shawn Rostker

Guangzhou Shows Why China Is So Attractive to the Global South

By gabriele manca.

Fresh Reports Emerge of Rohingya Killings in Western Myanmar

By sebastian strangio.

By Mehedi Hasan Marof

By Peng Gao, Zhen Zhang, and Yayuan Mo

By Tasnim Nazeer

By Ansel Bayly and Sarah Tzinieris

Receive great stories from around the world directly in your inbox.

Stay up to date about Global Voices and our mission. See our Privacy Policy for details. Newsletter powered by Mailchimp ( Privacy Policy  and  Terms ).

• bahasa Indonesia

See all those languages up there? We translate Global Voices stories to make the world's citizen media available to everyone.

• Middle East
• Human Rights
• Digital Activism
• All topics »

China helped Cameroon build drinking water infrastructure. Is it a debt crisis or developmental aid?

Water distribution in the Horn of Africa. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license .

Cameroon, a country on the West Coast of Central Africa, is struggling to deliver potable drinking water to its population of 27.91 million people — particularly in rural regions, which are significantly affected by armed groups like Boko Haram insurgents and Anglophone separatists . Despite large loans from the World Bank and the African Development Bank to support water facilities and sanitation projects, this clean water deficit persists, even as Cameroon remains the African country with the greatest freshwater resources .

This is largely due to  intense internal conflict in recent years. Since 2017, Cameroon separatists have been fighting for independence, leading the ruling government to mobilize thousands of military personnel to contain the Anglophone insurgency. According to a World Bank report, household survey data collected in 2021 and 2022 indicated that 23.0 percent of the population in Cameroon lives below the extreme international poverty line of USD 2.15 per person per day (PPP), largely because of the aforementioned conflict. 

Only 43 percent of Cameroonians have access to basic sanitation facilities  due to climate change , poverty, violent conflict , ongoing drought in some regions, and other related causes.

Chinese development within Cameroon

Since the early 2000s, China (officially known as the PRC) has sought to strengthen relations with Cameroon in order to improve its standing in the African continent. As a result, the Asian powerhouse has funded development projects such as a water treatment plants, railways, electricity facilities, roads, ports, and more.

Béatrice Kauli Ngumo, a resident of the capital Youndé, shared the positive impact of the project and the PRC's investment in a phone interview with Global Voices: 

At the start, we lived with illnesses and scarcity. Cholera was our neighbor we were doing six kilometers from here to get water. Intestinal worms were common while COVID-19 had wreaked havoc due to lack of potable water as well.

In 2010, China, through the Export-Import Bank of China, offered Cameroon a USD 743 million (5.33 billion Chinese Yuan, CNY) loan for the aforementioned water project. In 2017, China opened its wallet again and granted Cameroon another USD 81.5 million (CNY 594 million) for water facilities and sanitation development. In 2014, China Overseas Group's Cameroon division (中地海外水务有限公司) constructed drinking water treatment plants and related facilities in four cities in the country. In 2017 , the Bafoussam drinking water treatment plant was completed and quickly put into official use.

In an interview with Chinese official media, project deputy manager Han Wei stated :

作为对旧水厂的扩建，新水厂目前可日产一万立方米水。为应对当地频繁断电造成无法输水的问题，水厂还新建了两座水塔，以便停电时利用重力势能持续为用户送水.

As an expansion of the old water plant, the new water plant can currently produce 10,000 cubic meters of water per day. The plant has also built two new water towers to continuously supply water to users using gravitational potential energy during power outages.

Urban versus rural water access

In March 2024, on International Water Day, the United Nations shared that the population with access to water increased from 45.3 percent in 2007 to around 70 percent in 2024. It is a notable improvement, however, the situation remains precarious in rural areas, where less than half of households have access to drinking water compared to 8 out of 10 households in urban areas . 

In addition, the quality of the water available is not always good and sometimes leads to diseases and malnutrition.   

Even in large cities like Yaoundé, many people still consume water from boreholes , said activist Christophe Nyemeck Beat, an environment and sanitation journalist in Yaoundé, in an interview with Global Voices

A child uses a borehole in Ghana. Image from Flickr , license CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

In the city of Douala, some neighborhoods or districts rejoice in the presence of drinking water flowing freely through their taps. But in other places, like the island district of Minoca,  located near Yaoundé, there is no pumping station and people often suffer from diseases and water-borne illnesses. 

The violence in separatist regions has also contributed to this inequality. Since the intensification of fighting, attacks, and abductions , in 2017, separatist regions have faced increased poverty and a lack of water. The mixture of misery, lack of potable water, drought, and COVID-19 made the separatist region nearly unlivable . Humanitarian assessments show that at least 3,000 people have been killed, while another 730,000 civilians have fled their homes so far.

This instability poses challenges for potential Chinese investors: It is difficult for corporations to work in places that are actively fighting against the government they hope to work with. The Chinese Embassy has explicitly requested Chinese enterprises evacuate the country's war-torn areas  to ensure their workers’ safety.

In March 2023, nine Chinese miners were killed in an armed attack in the Central African Republic, triggering outrage in Beijing, which called for the immediate repatriation of Chinese citizens from the country, and demanded a strong punishment for those involved. Chinese-owned companies are also frequently attacked in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which further limits China’s work in Africa, including Cameroon.

Economic exchange between China and Cameroon 

China, for the last 20  years now, has become the key player in the African continent's industrial development.

While many beneficiaries of Chinese investment (often called the Belt and Road Initiative project ) are concerned about the so-called debt trap associated with this project, in Cameroon, citizens, and government officials are still enjoying the benefits of this relationship.

In 2018, Cameroonian President Paul Biya visited China in person and, during this official visit, signed five trade agreements with the economic giant. Over the past 20 years, China has provided developing countries with aid programs worth over one trillion dollars as part of its South-South cooperation plan . However, there is also criticism that this substantial investment has pushed Global South countries into debt crises , with debt growth outpacing their economic capacity. Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, has stated that 40 percent of African countries are in debt distress.

Cameroon is one of the countries with high debt burdens . According to statistics , the proportion of the national budget allocated to external creditors is still significantly higher than that of the Ministry of Defense. Cameroon's external debt to China is more than USD 5 billion for 45 loan projects.

In recent years, China's aid has gradually shifted from helping to build infrastructure to providing “emergency assistance” to help these countries repay their debts.

The Chinese government has repeatedly denied that its aid is linked to the debt burdens of African countries. In 2019, China forgave 450 billion CFA francs (equivalent to USD 78 million) of Cameroon's debt. Cameroon holds significant strategic importance for China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

However, this repeated debt forgiveness has sparked public outrage among some Chinese citizens. Critics question why China continues to lavish money on Africa when at least 30 million Chinese people still live in poverty, with an annual income of less than CNY 2,300 (about USD 340).

This context has put China in a challenging position in relation to Africa. On one hand, China now has a significant stake in seeing African nations prosper and develop their infrastructure due to the significant capital still owed. On the other, domestic criticism and instability in some of the African markets have made the path forward uncertain. 

• Sub-Saharan Africa
• Development
• Economics & Business
• Environment
• International Relations
• Global Climate Justice Fellowship

Support our work

Global Voices stands out as one of the earliest and strongest examples of how media committed to building community and defending human rights can positively influence how people experience events happening beyond their own communities and national borders.

Please consider making a donation to help us continue this work.

Recent East Asia Stories

In a blow to democracy, Thai court dissolves main opposition party

Interview with Korean-Ukrainian podcaster Oleksandr Shyn about Taiwan's linguistic landscape

Hip-hop artist recalls her husband’s execution in Myanmar

Recent stories.

Pro-democracy activists in Zimbabwe are being prosecuted for ‘public disorder’

After the SID4 conference in Antigua & Barbuda, ‘small islands’ fight to maintain ‘special case’ status at the UN

Venezuelan migrant in Colombia: ‘I dream of returning to rebuild our country’

Start the conversation.

Authors, please log in »

Name (required)

Email (will not be published) (required)

Subscribe to comments on this post via email

• All comments are reviewed by a moderator . Do not submit your comment more than once or it may be identified as spam.
• Please treat others with respect . Comments containing hate speech, obscenity, and personal attacks will not be approved.
• What Is Global Voices?
• Partner with Global Voices
• Translation Services

Global Voices is supported by the efforts of our volunteer contributors, foundations, donors and mission-related services. For more information please read our Fundraising Ethics Policy .

Special thanks to our many sponsors and funders .

Please support our important work:

-->