Northern China is running out of water, but the government's remedies are potentially disastrous. CHINA endures choking smog, mass destruction of habitats and food poisoned with heavy metals. But ask an environmentalist what is the country's biggest problem, and the answer is always the same.
"Water is the worst," says Wang Tao, of the Carnegie-Tsinghua Centre in Beijing, "because of its scarcity, and because of its pollution.
" "Water," agrees Pan Jiahua, of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. "People can’t survive in a desert." Wang Shucheng, a former water minister, once said: "To fight for every drop of water or die: that is the challenge facing China."
Thanks to overuse, rivers simply disappear. The number of rivers with significant catchment areas has fallen from more than 50,000 in the 1950s to 23,000 now.