One of the biggest challenges facing China’s future development is water, which must support the country’s 1.4 billion people and booming industries. Despite being one of the top five countries with the largest freshwater resources, on a per capita basis, China faces serious water shortages which are further compounded by a highly uneven spatial distribution and precipitation: the densely populated north suffers from acute water shortages whereas the south is prone to severe floods. To optimize the allocation of water resources, China has embarked on the construction of a mega engineering project, the South North Water Diversion project (SNWD).

Expanding the world’s largest water transfer project

The project was first proposed in 1952 by Mao Zedong who concluded that “the south has plenty of water, the north much less. If possible, the north should borrow a little.” And the SNWD does exactly that — it diverts water from the South to the North along three routes: eastern, middle, and western. The eastern route transfers water through Jiangsu to Shandong and Tianjin via the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, which dates back to nearly 2,500 years ago. The middle route, diverting water from Hubei province to Beijing and Tianjin, has been in use since 2014.

The western, and most controversial route, has not yet been built. In May 2021, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced that China will press ahead with the world’s largest water diversion project. The western route’s plans are split into two categories: modest plans from the government and ambitious proposals from scholars.

Various plans for the western route

The official plan for the western route links the Yangtze and Yellow rivers across the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau to divert 17 billion m3 of water, approximately 7 million Olympic-sized swimming pools, to Gansu and neighbouring provinces each year. This transfer is massive, but notably much smaller than two alternate water transfer plans  targeting water from the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau. 

The Shuotian Canal (Great Western Route) was an earlier proposal by water expert Guo Kai in the 1990s. By building a dam in Tibet, 200 billion m3 of water could be diverted from Sichuan to Beijing and Tianjin. It was later concluded that the Shuotian Canal is neither technically feasible nor necessary.

Another proposal from 2017 on the Red Flag River was introduced by Tsinghua professor Wang Hao. It plans to annually divert 60 billion m3 of water from transboundary rivers on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, including the upstream of the Brahmaputra, Mekong, and Salween, to northwest China. This would create 200 million mu (133,333 km2) of arable land in Xinjiang and a 150,000km2 greenbelt in the northwest. However, its feasibility has been questioned by academics and geographers.

As a possible alternative to the western route, the Tianhe project, the world’s largest weather modification and artificial rainmaking system, was proposed by scientists from Tsinghua and Qinghai universities in 2015. The Tianhe project uses glaciogenic cloud seeding to annually create 5-10 billion m3 of rain above northern China. It was included in Qinghai’s 13th Five Year Plan. 

National food security driver and environmental concerns

The western route is needed to safeguard the country’s water and food security while balancing regional economic development. As Xi Jinping stated in 2014, the lifeline of food production lies in the country’s water conservancy systems. Aside from grappling with national water quality, quantity, and unequal distribution, China faces a lack of arable land: estimates suggest that only 14 percent of the country’s total land is arable. With the remainder heavily contaminated by pollutants, this aggravates water scarcity, food safety, and food security concerns. Due to a changing dietary landscape, including increased demand for water-intensive produce like meat, these challenges will continue to increase. Hence, to the Chinese leaders, the western route could solve northern China’s water shortage problems and protect China’s overall food security.

Social and ecological concerns raised by environmentalists and scientists have delayed the construction of the western route. As both the Shuotian Canal and Red Flag River would need to cross earthquake-prone areas and mountain ranges, there are fears that they could result in seismic and environmental consequences such as landslides.

Competing local interests

Unlike the central government, provincial governments are less concerned about equity of access to resources. On the one hand, southern provinces from where water will be transferred, particularly Sichuan and Hubei provinces, which are located at the Yangtze River’s upstream, strongly oppose the western route. Not only does diverting water from these provinces threaten their own water supply, leading to fears of water scarcity and droughts, but it would additionally undermine the local hydropower sectors. In Sichuan, home to China’s largest hydropower sector, governments have publicly supported local scientists who strongly dispute the western route’s feasibility.

On the other hand, western provinces, such as Gansu and Qinghai, support the western route. They believe it will encourage regional socio-economic development by providing water for local industries, coal, and agriculture. Given their huge water demand, western provinces prefer the ambitious unofficial proposals. For example, the Gansu provincial government has provided support for  research on various options to divert waters from Tibet (the Brahmaputra River) to Gansu.

International implications

India has long worried over China’s plans to divert the Brahmaputra, fearing it could cause water shortages. This is, however, a misperception: the official western route plans to divert waters from the Yangtze and Yellow rivers, not from transnational rivers like the Brahmaputra. Additionally, these unofficial proposals are not being seriously considered by the central government.

Furthermore, there is no consensus on the actual impacts from the plans on the downstream region’s water supply. To some Indian scholars, China’s water ambitions and perceived weaponization of water have caused alarm. As little as seven percent of the Brahmaputra’s flow comes from China, so even if the radical Shuotian Canal and Red Flag River are constructed, the actual impacts on water flows downstream will be limited.

Nevertheless, the strategic implications of these projects should not be overlooked. To some, the potential ability to manipulate the water flows could provide China strategic leverage over India.

An alternative route for water supply

Rather than relying on these mega projects to address national water challenges, China should reduce rising water demand, improve water use efficiency, and tackle water pollution. Given agricultural water demand accounts for most of the country’s water usage, China should balance water and food security, and consider undertaking regional and structural reforms to its agricultural sector.

The post To Build or Not to Build: Western Route of China’s South-North Water Diversion Project appeared first on fnvaworld.org.

China’s government today transferred more than $6 million to Myanmar’s military government to fund a range of development projects, in the latest sign that Beijing is accommodating itself to the junta that seized power in February.

According to a report in the state media agency Xinhua, the agreement was signed by Wunna Maung Lwin, the junta’s foreign minister, and Chinese Ambassador to Myanmar Chen Hai on Monday. The funds covered projects under Beijing’s Lancang-Mekong Cooperation framework in areas, including animal vaccines, agriculture, science, culture, tourism, and disaster prevention.

Despite being initially thrown off balance by the military’s surprise seizure of power on February 1, Beijing has regrouped and recalibrated its policy to the country’s changed circumstances. Where Western democracies have imposed a raft of targeted sanctions on the military junta and its key personnel, China has taken a more pragmatic approach.

The decisive shift toward de facto recognition was signaled in June, when Chinese officials began referring to coup leader Sen. Gen. Min Aung Hlaing as “the leader of Myanmar.”

As I’ve noted previously, this likely reflects a feeling in Beijing that despite the nationwide protests and unrest that have greeted the military takeover, the junta will remain in power for the foreseeable future. China therefore feels the need to come to terms with the country’s new reality in order to safeguard and advance its key strategic interests in the country, which center on developing markets for Chinese exports and creating an overland corridor from Yunnan province to the Indian Ocean.

The Chinese aid dispersal came as the U.S. government announced $50 million in aid to Myanmar, to help the country battle an explosive COVID-19 outbreak. In a stark contrast to China’s approach, none of this money will be going directly to the military authorities. Instead, the U.S. funding will be given directly to “international and non-governmental organization partners,” State Department spokesperson Ned Price said in a statement, in order to help them “provide emergency food assistance, lifesaving protection, shelter, essential health care, water, sanitation, and hygiene services to the people of Burma, including those who have fled from Burma or been displaced from their homes.”

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, announced the funding during a visit to Thailand yesterday, alongside $5 million in COVID-19 aid for Thailand. “This funding comes at a critical point of rising humanitarian needs and will help mitigate the impacts of COVID-19 on the lives of the people of both Thailand and Burma,” Price said. “In the wake of the February 1 coup, people from Burma continue to flee their homes due to ongoing violence.”

The U.S. aid is desperately needed, especially by the displaced people who will benefit from it. But its overall effect on the country’s COVID-19 crisis is likely to be limited, given Washington’s understandable reluctance (unlike Beijing) to engage directly with the Tatmadaw.ADVERTISEMENT

This points to a dilemma at the heart of the approach taken by those who are concerned about the deteriorating healthcare situation in Myanmar, yet also oppose any unnecessary engagement with the military. For example, the Special Advisory Council for Myanmar (SAC-M) last month issued a statement calling for an “urgent and massive” international humanitarian intervention in order to confront Myanmar’s COVID-19 outbreak.

In the statement, SAC-M member Chris Sidoti, a former member of the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar, said that the situation had “become a humanitarian disaster of such proportions that an international presence of health and medical personnel has become critical.”

At the same time, Yanghee Lee, another member of SAC-M, told an online press conference that the military government “must not be considered a partner for the delivery of aid.” Instead, the generals “should be recognized as murderers who will be held to account for their crimes.”

Unspoken was the possibility that these two aims might be mutually exclusive. Certainly, the grasping generals who are currently in control of the majority of Myanmar’s territory deserve to face justice for the calamitous loss of life and well-being that has resulted from their seizure of power.

At the same time, the people of Myanmar have a critical need for COVID-19 vaccines, personal protective equipment, and test kits. Given the junta’s effective control of Myanmar’s airspace and the country’s ethnic Burman heartland, any aid hoping to reach the bulk of the country’s population can’t avoid some form of interface with the military and its “caretaker government.”

While there are long-established channels for aid across the Thai border into southeastern Myanmar, these have limited reach into the central regions of the country. Their use for the mounting of a large-scale humanitarian aid effort would also require the consent and support of the Thai government – something that can’t be taken for granted, given its generally supine reaction to the Tatmadaw’s putsch.

The reality remains that the goals of aiding the people of Myanmar in their fight against COVID-19, and pursuing justice for the junta’s crimes and supporting the popular fight against military rule, presently remain in a considerable degree of tension. For those concerned about Myanmar’s entwined healthcare and politics crises, the most pressing question therefore is whether there is some half-way point of engagement that avoids both China’s open recognition of the military junta and the West’s present standoffishness.

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