Copyright © 1998 The Seattle Times Company
Posted at 07:06 a.m. PDT; Friday, May 29, 1998
Economist predicts water shortage will change China
by Reuters
BEIJING - China's dried-up rivers, shrinking lakes and polluted streams point to a water crisis
that could wrench its economy, U.S. economist Lester Brown said today.
"China will be the first country that will have to literally restructure its economy to respond to
water scarcity," Brown told reporters.
Brown created a stir three years ago with his book "Who Will Feed China?," which forecast that
China's growing appetite for imported grain would send economic and political shock waves
around the world.
That conclusion has been challenged by satellite surveys showing that China has far more arable
land than previously thought.
Agronomists suggest China could boost its own crop yields and global grain production could be
expanded to meet a surge in Chinese demand.
But Brown believes there is evidence of a new looming threat - water scarcity.
A potent symbol of China's water crisis is the Yellow River, which fails to reach the sea for
two-thirds of the year, its waters siphoned off by thousands of farms, factories and dams
upstream, Brown said.
He said satellite images taken over the past three decades showed shrinking lakes and vanishing
streams.
Water tables in China's cities have fallen to dangerously low levels.
At the heart of the problem is Beijing's water-pricing policy, which treats water as a free
resource rather than a commodity, Brown said.
Other countries with severe water shortages have switched to importing grain, since buying a ton
of wheat from abroad saves 1,000 tons of water at home.
But China's policy of agricultural self-reliance has ruled out that option, Brown said.
"China is going to have to fashion a unique response to water scarcity," he said.
Hydropower stations will have to be scrapped in favor of wind turbines. Soviet-era factories will
have to pay for cleaner technologies.
Brown still believes China's population, now 1.2 billion, and improving living standards means
large-scale grain imports are inevitable.
China would need to import 175 million tons of grain by 2025, straining the ability of producing
countries to keep up with demand, he said.
"If China is forced to turn to the world market for massive quantities of grain, it will drive world
grain prices up dramatically and create instability in third-world cities."
China's granaries are now overflowing after two consecutive years of bumper harvests.
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