China Faces a Water Crisis

After decades of massive economic growth and the migration of villagers to cities, the scarcity of water in China is more dire than ever

By Dexter Roberts

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Over the past year getting clean water has been a struggle for many in China. In February one of the most severe droughts to hit China in a half-century affected some 5 million people and 2.5 million livestock in the provinces of Hebei and Henan, near Beijing. Farther south in Yancheng, Jiangsu, 300 kilometers from Shanghai, more than 200,000 people were cut off from clean water for three days when a chemical factory dumped carbolic acid into a river. Just before the Olympics last June, the coastal city of Qingdao, site of the sailing events, saw an explosion of algae in nearby waters that may have been caused by pollution.

These are hardly unusual in China. The country that has a long history of devastating floods and droughts arguably faces an even bigger water crisis today. After almost 30 years of double-digit economic growth and the migration of hundreds of millions of villagers to the cities, China has been barely able to meet the spike in demand for water. Its resources were scarce to begin with and pollution has made clean water even scarcer. Another unknown: the effect of climate change. "Based on our country's basic water situation, [we] must implement the strictest water resource management," said Vice-Premier Hui Liangyu at a national water conference in Beijing in January.

The scale of the challenge is enormous. Every year, on average 15.3 million hectares of farmland—13% of the total—faces drought. Today some 300 million people living in rural areas, or nearly a quarter of China's population of 1.3 billion, don't have access to safe drinking water. And among more than 600 Chinese cities, 400 are facing water shortages, including 100 that may see serious shortages, says Ma Jun, director of the Beijing-based Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs and author of China's Water Crisis. The country would need another 40 billion cubic meters of water a year—about a tenth of the volume of Lake Erie in the U.S.—to meet the needs of all of its city dwellers fully. "China is facing a dire situation in its water supply," says Ma.

Years of Damage

One of China's biggest problems: wastewater. Factories and cities have discharged mostly untreated sewage and pollutants into the country's rivers and lakes—some 53.7 billion tons in 2006 alone, according to the World Bank. China's environmental regulators have designated 48 of China's major lakes as seriously polluted. One-fourth of the water sampled along China's two largest rivers—the Yangtze and Yellow—was found to be too polluted even for farm irrigation. And tap water isn't entirely safe, either, with Chinese authorities responding to 48 large-scale environmental emergencies last year. "Extensive water pollution of course impacts on water scarcity. This is especially [true] in China," says Washington-based Jamal Saghir, director of the Energy, Transport & Water Unit of the World Bank.

China's huge population is a strain, too. The country's water resources are only about 25% of the average per capita for countries around the world. That problem is compounded by a huge regional disparity. Southern China has a relative abundance of water, getting more than 2,000 millimeters (79 inches) a year of rainfall. In the north—where 17 million people live in Beijing and 12 million live in Tianjin—the average annual rainfall is just 200mm to 400mm (7.9 in. to 15.8 in.) a year. "Availability of water drops to a very low level on the north China plain, even below that of Israel," says Ma. And this region is home to "China's political and cultural capital, major manufacturing, and one of China's bread baskets," he adds.

China has worsened its own problems by offering large subsidies for water to keep prices low. That practice has led to plenty of waste, experts say.