Water shortage and water diversion scheme…

Beijing’s water shortage | A shortage of capital flows | The Economist

THE water level at Wangkuai Reservoir, one of the biggest in Hebei province, is close to an historic high—in a region gripped by drought. This has been achieved by hoarding the water. Local farmers say they have received none for two years. A hydroelectric plant by the huge dam is idle. Wangkuai is preparing for what officials call a “major political task”—channelling its water to Beijing, to help boost the city’s severely depleted supplies.

On September 28th, after more than four years’ work on a 307km-long (191-mile) waterway costing more than $2 billion, Beijing began receiving its top-up. Two other large Hebei reservoirs, Gangnan and Huangbizhuang (see map), were the first to feed the new channel. Wangkuai is due to open its sluices in December, says a dam supervisor. Oddly for such a large and supposedly vital project, the launch was low key. Yet the channel’s inauguration was the most notable achievement so far of what, in the coming years, is intended to become a far more grandiose diversion scheme: bringing water from the Yangzi basin to the parched north, along channels stretching more than 1,000km.

China’s leaders have reason to be sheepish. Controversy has long plagued the South-North water diversion project, as the scheme is formally known. Launched with much fanfare in 2002, it was described as a move to fulfil Mao Zedong’s vision of 50 years earlier, when he had said that to solve the north’s chronic shortage it was “OK to lend a little water” from the south. But many worried whether the water would be clean enough, and about the risk of perpetuating the north’s reckless water-consumption habits.