China's water woes worsen

Water and the environment could be the undoing of the go-go (well, at the moment, no-go) economy. Social unrest due to environmental deterioriation, and the abandonment of the worker class -- or at least the perceived abandonment of the worker class, could really eat at the roots of the totalitarian government.


Province supplying Beijing water drying up: state media

"Hebei, part of China's parched north, is one of the major suppliers of water to neighbouring Beijing and Tianjin -- two sprawling cities that together group at least 28 million people and are running out of the resource.

China's rapid economic expansion has helped deplete its water supplies and has long been one of the country's major concerns."

If there isn't much water upstream, there will be less downstream.

Believe it or not, they're going to divert the Yangtze to quench Beijing's thirst. That's some serious geo-engineering.

"China is in the process of building the multi-billion dollar North-South Water Diversion Project to bring water from the nation's longest river, the Yangtze, to the parched north."

Between that, the Three Rivers Gorge Dam, and the bridge over Hangzhou Bay, China is making a serious effort to remodel the landscape to serve its people. There's a limit to how far that will work, I imagine.