ASIA / PACIFIC
Page 4 n THE ASIAN REPORTER
October 6, 2014
Drought worsens China’s long-term water crisis
DRIED UP & TAPPED OUT. Boats sit on a
dried river bed in Xunxian county in central China’s
Henan province. After a season of record-breaking
drought across China, groundwater levels hit historic
lows in northeast and central parts of China where
hundreds of millions of people live. Reservoirs grew
so dry in agricultural Henan province that the city of
Pingdingshan closed car washes and bathhouses and
extracted water from puddles. (AP Photo)
By Jack Chang
The Associated Press
EXINGTEN, China — The corn
has grown to only half its normal
height on Yan Shuqin’s ranch in
the hills of Inner Mongolia this year, as a
swath of northern China suffers its worst
drought in 60 years.
The ruddy-faced woman said that even
before the rains stopped, the groundwater
in her region had been sinking, from about
70 feet below the surface just a few years
ago to as much as 260 feet this past
summer. While she can still eat and sell
the corn, lettuce, and other vegetables on
her farm, the yield has shrunk.
“If the grass doesn’t grow and the
vegetables die off, who’s going to be able to
live here?” Yan asked outside her family’s
spotless two-room house. “My mother and
her mother lived here. My family has
always lived here. What are my children
going to do?”
After a season of record-breaking
drought across China, groundwater levels
hit historic lows in northeast and central
parts of China where hundreds of millions
of people live. Reservoirs grew so dry in
agricultural Henan province that the city
of Pingdingshan closed car washes and
bathhouses and extracted water from
puddles.
But this is no one-time emergency.
Farmers like Yan and water-hungry
industries have been wrestling with a
long-term water crisis that has dried up
more than half the country’s 50,000
significant rivers and left hundreds of
cities facing what the government
classifies as a “serious scarcity” of water.
Half a billion Chinese live in a handful of
provinces, largely in the northeast, where
coal-fired power plants, steel foundries,
and other water-gulping industries
already burden reservoirs and aquifers.
Widespread chemical runoff and other
pollution have contaminated 60 percent of
the country’s groundwater.
The country’s climate is also warming,
particularly in its populous northeast
where rain levels have fallen, according to
H
China, flooding cities that just days earlier
had been struggling to keep taps flowing.
But fields remain bone-dry and parched in
Inner Mongolia and other northern
regions.
In response to the country’s water woes,
Chinese authorities have called for solu-
tions that include relying more on imports
for foods that require lots of water to
produce, such as grains and vegetable oils.
They also are betting on more than 1,500
miles of canal that, when complete, will
move trillions of gallons of water from the
rivers of China’s south to its dry north. One
branch of the canal leading straight to
Beijing is expected to be done this fall.
Many water experts remain skeptical
about the project, however, with some
warning it could wreak havoc on southern
aquifers and watersheds.
But Fuqiang Yang, a senior adviser with
the U.S.-based National Resources
Defense Council, said the canal could
relieve water shortages in some northern
cities such as Beijing, if launched with
conservation and water reuse measures.
Without the canals, metropolitan Beijing
only has enough water for 15 million
people, not the 20 million who now live
there, he said.
“This has always been a regional
a 2011 study by Chinese, French, and
British researchers. Meanwhile, the
country’s south has seen its rainfall
concentrated in shorter bursts, which has
made it harder to predict water supplies.
As a result, per capita water availability
in the megacities of Beijing and Shanghai
as well as their surrounding provinces
equals that of dry Middle Eastern
countries such as Israel and Jordan, said
Feng Hu, a water analyst with the Hong-
Kong-based research group China Water
Risk. By comparison, the average U.S.
household has access to nearly five times
more available water than Chinese
households do.
“If we continue with our business-as-
usual model, the demand will exceed
supply by 2030,” Feng said at a lecture in
Beijing. “The water crisis is a real risk.”
Already, Chinese farmers have lost an
estimated $1.2 billion this year due to
drought, while China has slowed plans to
tap its vast deposits of shale gas, which sit
in areas with the greatest scarcity. The
water crisis is also hitting China’s main
energy source, coal, which requires large
amounts of water to extract and convert
into power.
Heavy rains in late September helped
lift some of the immediate crisis in central
problem,” Yang said. “Groundwater is
going down very quickly ... These areas
will not be able to solve the problems
themselves. So this canal will provide
some important help there.”
But Feng said Chinese authorities also
need to encourage conservation by ending
its subsidization of water consumption by
all users, from households to farmers to
industries. The average price of resi-
dential water in Beijing, for example, is a
fifth of that in New York. And although
China’s per capita consumption rate still
falls below the global average, it is rising
steadily as the country’s economy expands.
Industry and agriculture make up 85
percent of China’s water consumption.
“For something so scarce, water in
China is not priced at the level it should
be,” Feng said.
The canals still won’t help farmers in
remote regions such as far western
Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia where the
drought has hit the hardest. Despite the
arid conditions there, China’s government
actually hopes to stimulate more water-
dependent industries such as coal-fired
energy production that will compete with
farmers for meager resources.
In Hexingten county in Inner Mongolia,
people say they’ve already seen radical
climate shifts. Last winter went by
without any significant snows to replenish
streams and groundwater, followed by a
drought-plagued spring and summer.
A 40-year-old farmer in Hexingten who
would only identify himself by his family
name of Bao said everyone there is
wondering how long they can survive in
these grasslands.
“The environment was good before,” Bao
said. “The grasses grew so tall. Now, it
doesn’t even rain anymore.”
Taiwan throws support behind Hong Kong democracy demands
By Didi Tang
The Associated Press
EIJING — Taiwan, an island that China’s ruling
Communist Party has long sought to bring into its
fold under the same “one country, two systems”
arrangement it has for Hong Kong, has thrown its support
behind Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement.
Taiwanese leaders have also urged Beijing to live up to
its pledges of autonomy in the former British colony or
risk further alienating the Taiwanese public.
“If Hong Kong can soon achieve universal suffrage, it
would be a win-win for Hong Kong and the mainland, and
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Texting apps required gear
for Hong Kong protests
By Wendy Tang
The Associated Press
ONG KONG —
Just as protesters
in
Egypt
de-
pended on Twitter three
years ago, the latest digital
tools have become required
gear for tens of thousands
of people demanding demo-
cratic reforms on the
streets of Hong Kong.
Many of the demon-
strators are glued to the
smartphone app FireChat,
which lets them com-
municate even if cellphone
networks jam or go down.
The protesters just have to
turn on their Bluetooth
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it can greatly help narrow the mental gap between
residents on both sides of (the Taiwan Strait) and allow for
the relations to develop positively,” Taiwanese President
Ma Ying-jeou said.
“Otherwise, it may deepen the antipathy of Taiwan’s
public and hurt the future of relations between the two
sides,” Ma said in the statement.
In August, Beijing rejected a proposal for open
nominations of candidates for Hong Kong’s first-ever
leadership election in 2017. Instead, all candidates must
continue to be picked by a panel that is mostly aligned
with Beijing.
In response, tens of thousands of people have rallied in
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connections within 230 feet
from anyone else using the
app to see the messages
sent by the entire chat
group, creating a daisy-
chain effect.
Cellphone networks and
websites continue to work
normally in Hong Kong,
although protesters ran
into slow network con-
nections last week when
trying to use their devices
at the same time.
FireChat was reportedly
downloaded 100,000 times
by users in Hong Kong in
just 24 hours.
Frances Siu said she
Continued on page 16
Hong Kong’s streets since September 22 to press demands
for genuine democratic reforms that are in line with “one
country, two systems,” the arrangement negotiated for
the 1997 return of the city from British to Chinese
rule.
That constitutional arrangement initially was formu-
lated by China’s late Communist leader, Deng Xiaoping,
in an attempt to peacefully reunify with Taiwan, where
the nationalist government of the Republic of China
settled in 1949 as its last stronghold after losing a civil
war to the Communists on the mainland.
The nationalist government’s ambitions to reclaim the
mainland later fizzled, and the island became a
self-governing democracy, although there has never been
a formal declaration of independence.
In late September, Chinese President Xi Jinping put
forward the “one country, two systems” arrangement for
Taiwan again, only to see it openly rejected by both Ma
and Taiwan’s opposition party.
Speaking about the Hong Kong pro-democracy protests,
Huang Di-ying, spokesman for Taiwan’s opposition
Democratic Progressive Party, said the city’s residents
had received “a birdcage election law that made a mockery
of what the people of Hong Kong had come to expect.”
Taiwan’s governmental Mainland Affairs Council also
issued a statement declaring its support for the
pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong and invoking its
significance for all Chinese people.
“People of Hong Kong have long had high hopes for the
implementation of universal suffrage, using it to test if the
mainland has truly fulfilled its promises under ‘one
country, two systems,”’ the statement said.
Should Hong Kong’s democracy move forward, the
council said, “it will not only ensure the long-term stabili-
ty of Hong Kong, but also be of profound significance to the
long-term development” of relations between China and
Taiwan and “for the development of democracy and rule of
law for the entire Chinese people.”