Watch the crop growing regions in the North, as China is just one half assed drought away from huge shortages. The big Communist era stockpiles are long gone, and last year they dodged a bullet by finally putting together a good crop, after four years of decline.
Water Crisis - Part 1
China is facing one of the world's worst water resource crisis. Since the early 1980s, China's industrial development has dried up wells and springs, turned lakes to dust and polluted 80% of the rivers and streams. China is divided into two regions: the 'humid south', which includes the Yangtze River basin and everything south of it, and the 'dry north', which includes all the country north of the Yangtze basin. The south, with 700 million people, has one third of the nation's cropland and four fifths of its water. The north, with 550 million people, has two thirds of the cropland and one fifth of the water.
Water shortage is one of the biggest problems facing the economy. Even though China's per capita water consumption remains low - averaging only about 100 liters a day - supply still cannot keep up with the growing demand. In 1997 the average water use per capita stood at 2,220 cubic meters per year. By the year 2001, the number dropped to only 2,000 cubic meters of water per person (only one-quarter of the world average). Usage below 1,700 cubic meters of water per capita is common in draught stricken areas. In 1999, China provided 220 million cubic meters of water a day for cities. Also in that year, some 40.1 billion cubic-meters of wastewater were discharged from urban areas. In 1999, China's total volume of water (both usable and non-usable) was 2.8 trillion cubic meters. Each year there is a gap of 30 to 40 billion cubic meters between water supply and domestic demand.
Northern Regions - The water per hectare of cropland in the north is one eighth that of the south. The excessive exploitation of water has resulted in falling ground water levels in many Chinese cities. Of China's 668 cities, about 400 suffer water shortages. In the countryside, riots have broken out as farmers battled for water. In the year 2000, civil unrest over water erupted several times, including a deadly riot by villagers in the eastern province of Shandong (July 2000), after officials cut off water supplies from a reservoir they had used to irrigate crops.
Beijing is one of the most populous regions in China. Its annual water consumption is presently 4 billion cubic meters, more than 50% of which is used by the agriculture sector. With economic development and continuous drought, Beijing faces a severe water shortage. In 1999 the water table under Beijing fell by 2.5 meters. Since 1965, the water table under the city has fallen by some 59 meters or nearly 200 feet, warning China's leaders of the shortages that lie ahead as the country's aquifers are depleted. Under the North China Plain, a region that stretches from Jiangsu Province (just north of Shanghai) to well north of Beijing and that produces 40% of China's grain, the water table is dropping by an average of 1.5 meters per year.
In the year 2000, in Xi'an, the capital of Shaanxi Province, the water table had dropped by so much that the ground itself was sinking five times as fast as it was in the 1970s. A second province, Hubei (located in Central China), was once known as "a province of more than a thousand lakes". In the late 1950s it had 1,066 lakes; in 2000, it has just 182, as most had shrunk and disappeared.
By June 2001, areas of northern China received an average of as little as 49mm of rain (February to May) - a record low for the past 50 years. The previous month, the State Flood-Control and Drought Prevention Headquarters in Beijing reported that millions of hectares of farmland and wild areas have been scorched. The drought has affected 20 provinces. The drought affected 28 million hectares of farm land and 1.38 million hectares of paddy fields. Some 22.6 million rural residents and 14.5 million livestock were without adequate drinking water. The State Council and local governments were drawing up emergency water supply plans for the north's major industrial cities. Most areas along the Yellow River, Huaihe River and Southwest China had all decreased in rainfall, ranging from 30% to 90%. For instance, water levels in the reservoirs in Northeast China's Liaoning and Jilin provinces dropped 46% and 45% respectively from levels at the same time in non-drought years.
In July 2001, Xiaolangdi Reservoir, China's largest water-control project on the Yellow River, had to stop generating electricity to increase the irrigation water supply for the river's lower reaches plagued by the worst drought since 1990. The water level in the reservoir, with a designed storage capacity of over 12.6 billion cubic meters of water, had dropped below 205 meters, forcing the shutdown of the last two operating generating units. Two weeks before, two other generating units were shut down by authorities to increase water supply for irrigation downstream in an effort to help millions of farmers in Central China's Henan Province and East China's Shandong Province save their scorched crops.
The Yellow River - The Yellow River is the second longest river in China. As the major source of water in northwest and north China, it provides water to 50 large and medium-sized cities containing 12% of China's total population. By 2000, the amount of water in the lower reaches was only one third of what it was in the 1980s. Although the river's waters still reached the east coast delta, its flow had fallen below 50 cubic meters per second. Decreasing rainfall in the upper reaches is partly to blame but so is excessive utilization and disorderly management of water resources. The first dry-out occurred in 1972, and occurred almost yearly during the 1990s. The duration of the dry-outs has also been increasing. For three years straight, beginning in 1995, the Yellow River stopped flowing before it reached the sea. From 1996 to 1998 the river was dry for an average of 106 days each year. In 1997, the dry section extended up to Kaifeng City (in Henan Province), 780 km from the river mouth. The Lijin Hydrometric Station was without water for 226 days of that year. Provinces along the river have been ordered to reduce water use.
In the year 2000, the coastal area of Shandong Province experienced its worst drought since 1916, but government intervention, in the form of water management projects, prevented the province from going completely without water. The province produces a fifth of China's corn and a seventh of its wheat. Half of the province's irrigation water used to come from the Yellow River, a supply which is shrinking (the other half comes from an aquifer that is falling by 1.5 meters per year).
Qumarleb, on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau located 4,600 meters above sea level and 5,800 kilometers away from the estuary of the Yellow River, is one of the origins of the river. By 2001, Qumarleb succumbed to ecological deterioration brought on by adverse climate, over herding and gold mining. [In mid 1980, there was a "gold rush" in the region, and Qumarleb alone was inundated by more than 100,000 illegal gold panners from other parts of the country. The transient panners were driven away soon after, but the county started its own gold mining in 1995. By 2001, revenue from gold mining accounted for 60% of the county's total financial revenues, which amounted to US$2 million]. Drought had aggravated windstorms and evaporation in the area, which has annual precipitation of no more than 305.7mm. Since the early 1990s, throughout Qumarleb, (which has a population of 24,000 spread over an area of 46,800 square kilometers), 102 of some 110 wells have dried up. A provincial forestry administration survey found that desertification in the Yellow River source area has been increasing, with the rate of deterioration going up from 3.9% in the 1970s and '80s, to 20% in the '90s.
Agriculture and Water Pricing - In Dec. 2000, in its wish to tackle worsening water shortage and waste, for the first time since 1989, China started to reform its water pricing system for urban areas and industry. Before the price increase some 1,000 cubic meters of water from the Yellow River cost the same as a 1.5 liter bottle of mineral water. After the price increase, the water sector was still operating at a loss. Experts estimated that water authorities could recoup less than 20% of their annual costs for diverting water throughout China.
Irrigation accounts for more than 70% of China's total water use. Urban areas and industry consume only 30% of China's total water supply. The cost of drilling deep wells and pumping the water out is getting so high farmers can hardly afford it. In rural areas the average income is about US$260 per year so any price increase is potentially explosive.
Farmers in the north are faced with losses of irrigation water both from aquifer depletion and from the diversion of water to cities and industry. In much of northern China, this growing demand for water can be satisfied only by taking irrigation water from agriculture. In China, a thousand tons of water produces one ton of wheat, worth perhaps US$200. The same water used in industry will expand output by US$14,000, 70 times as much. In a country that is desperately seeking economic growth and, even more, the jobs it generates, the gain in diverting water from agriculture to industry is obvious. In short, falling water tables in China could mean rising food prices for the entire world.
Since 1997, Beijing has been developing a water-pricing scheme with financial and technical assistance from the Asia Development Bank (ADB). The bank has put US$1.5 million worth of funds into research. The proposed reforms failed to make progress until they were endorsed by some of China's top leaders. In 1998, not one of China's 600 cities wanted to participate in the scheme after it was introduced . City leaders feared public indignation, an increase in the burden on local enterprises and scaring away foreign investors. It was desperation that finally drove one (undeveloped) city, Zhangjiakou, on the northern Chinese plains south of the Great Wall, in Hebei Province, to join the scheme. By the end of 2000, Zhangjiakou had raised the price of water 40%, as the ADB suggested. The new scheme also employed a progressive rate for individual and company users, meaning those who exceeded the basic need-based quota fell into a punitive rate bracket as much as 200% higher. Recreational facilities and factories saw prices rise much higher than domestic users. According to Zhangjiakou Water Supply Corp figures, water consumption in the city fell by nearly 14% in 2001 from 1999, the year before the scheme was applied. Most of the reduction came from factories, which instituted recycling. |
