How History Shaped China's Water Crisis

[samlove]

How History Shaped China’s Water Crisis | The Diplomat

During the hot, dry month of August 1992 the farmers of Baishan village in Hebei province and Panyang village in Henan came to blows. Residents from each village hurled insults and rudimentary explosives at the other across the Zhang River – the river that feeds the Red Flag Canal Irrigation System and forms the border between the two provinces.
The emotions of that afternoon were fueled by events of the previous night, when 70 Baishan villagers had waded into the river to build a barrage to divert water to their fields. Upon hearing of the treachery, Panyang villagers assembled to drive the dam-builders away.
Two days later, Baishan villagers crossed the river to the Henan side and dynamited an irrigation canal that watered Panyang’s fields.

Struggles over water are not new in China or around the world. But these struggles have their own unique historical and cultural contexts. Climate, geography, and social forces all combined to escalate tensions over water resources on the North China Plain during the 1990s.

massive South-to-North Water Diversion project– remains powerfully attractive to contemporary Party leaders. On the other hand, both water allocation and pollution have impelled a re-examination of engineering in favor of demand management.
What is clearly different today is China’s integration into global trade networks, which make China’s resource challenges a global concern.
David Pietz is author of The Yellow River: The Problem of Water in Modern China (Harvard, 2015).


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[Lux de Veritas]

How History Shaped China’s Water Crisis | The Diplomat

During the hot, dry month of August 1992 the farmers of Baishan village in Hebei province and Panyang village in Henan came to blows. Residents from each village hurled insults and rudimentary explosives at the other across the Zhang River – the river that feeds the Red Flag Canal Irrigation System and forms the border between the two provinces.
The emotions of that afternoon were fueled by events of the previous night, when 70 Baishan villagers had waded into the river to build a barrage to divert water to their fields. Upon hearing of the treachery, Panyang villagers assembled to drive the dam-builders away.
Two days later, Baishan villagers crossed the river to the Henan side and dynamited an irrigation canal that watered Panyang’s fields.

Struggles over water are not new in China or around the world. But these struggles have their own unique historical and cultural contexts. Climate, geography, and social forces all combined to escalate tensions over water resources on the North China Plain during the 1990s.

massive South-to-North Water Diversion project– remains powerfully attractive to contemporary Party leaders. On the other hand, both water allocation and pollution have impelled a re-examination of engineering in favor of demand management.
What is clearly different today is China’s integration into global trade networks, which make China’s resource challenges a global concern.
David Pietz is author of The Yellow River: The Problem of Water in Modern China (Harvard, 2015).


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China will be the last country having water crisis. She do not believe in the capitalism crap and her elites respond to water shortage by massive public infrastructure.

The country with water crisis are India, California and the middle eastern states.

USA elites have prefer to let california go dry while stubbornly holding on to the tenet of stupid environmentalism and small-governmentism.

USA elites are aware that government must be render powerless in domestic affairs. A powerful government is also a government that will transfer wealth from the rich to the poor.

 

[IsaacNewton]

I think China will have to give up on a few destroyers to build 20-30 desalination plants along the coast.

 

[nizamuddin]

nice sharing

 

[Beidou2020]

I think China will have to give up on a few destroyers to build 20-30 desalination plants along the coast.

I don't think so.

 

[Sommer]

I think China will have to give up on a few destroyers to build 20-30 desalination plants along the coast.

I feel the same about American medical system~

 

[Zsari]

I think China will have to give up on a few destroyers to build 20-30 desalination plants along the coast.

China has the largest source of fresh water in the world, the Himalayas. South to North water diversion project need to be expanded further south. That will alleviate both drought and flood throughout the country.

 

[FairAndUnbiased]

I think China will have to give up on a few destroyers to build 20-30 desalination plants along the coast.

maybe we should give up on some US debt. Put some Americans to work with that debt building those desalination plants as part of the job creation program in the US. The destroyers can stay.

 

[XiangLong]

And guess where most of South-Asia's rivers get their fresh water from?

That aside though, the biggest threat here is not ''drought'', but improper irrigation. Especially rice paddies are prone to salinization due to long time bodies of water that remain stagnant on the surface, and which eventually brings up the minerals in the soil to the surface which in turn also naturally contains certain amounts of salt. When that water is not properly led away, the salt in the remaining water will eventually land on the surface of the soil, therefore leading to gradual salinization of the ground. In 9/10 times this how you get these unnecessarily barren wastelands.

And mind you, this is not only a problem for China, but also for many Southern and Eastern-Asian rice producing countries like India, Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand that rely on rice cultivation for their food consumption.