China’s Water Crisis: Institutional Barriers and Possible Solutions
Note: this article was written for a course specifically about water shortages around the world. While this research is accurate, I would not frame the problem in this particular way had I not had a liberal professor determining my grade in the course. I have included a works cited section at the end of this article so you can examine the sources yourself if you would like.
Like most nations, the People’s Republic of China has several issues that threaten its economic, political, and social stability and sustainability. These range from minor issues, such as small-scale political corruption, to major issues that must be addressed in the coming years, such as China’s dependence on coal. There is no issue posing a more existential threat than China’s impending water crisis, however. For years, China’s available water resources have been relatively low compared to the rest of the world: compare 2,200 m³ of available water per capita in China to the 11,500 m³ per capita in the United States (Zhang et al., 2003). There is a major geographic disparity in China’s water supply as well; the Huang (commonly referred to as the Yellow River), Hai, and Huai river basins in particular make up nearly 40 percent of Chinese agricultural outputs, nearly 35 percent of China’s population, and over 32 percent of GDP, but they held only 7.7 percent of the nation’s water reserves (Zhang et al., 2003).
China has found ways around the water shortages in the northern portion of the country, such as the South-North Water Transfer Project, but this solution may be too temporary. It is true that China’s water supply is generally limited, and its northern region may be water-stressed even without compounding variables. However, several systemic flaws have made much of China’s existing water policy lackluster and ineffective, worsening the crisis and making it more difficult to redirect from policy alone. Inevitably, the Chinese government will be forced to respond to the water crisis. These responses may vary from damming rivers that would otherwise flow into Southeast Asia to creating enforcement mechanisms for the existing water legislation. Whichever route the Chinese government takes, it will of course have to deal with externalities that make different sects of its population (or the international community) unhappy, perhaps leading to civil unrest or military conflict. In order for China to adequately address its water shortage without worsening tensions with other Asian nations by damming rivers, it will likely have to reconsider its historical self-sufficiency in food production and strengthen collaboration among the three tiers of Chinese government in its enforcement of new or existing water legislation.
For years, China has been self-sufficient (or near-sufficient) in producing grain for domestic consumption (Han et al., 2018). Retaining this has remained rather ideologically important to the Chinese government, as it prevents other nations from placing an embargo on China as political leverage. As China’s population has continued to grow, the domestic demand for grain is what led the central government to initiate large irrigation projects to bring water from the south to the north, ultimately increasing the amount of arable land. Existing irrigation has not been particularly efficient, however. In China’s coastal areas, grain yield per unit of water is only 1.2 kilograms per m³ of water; this yield is over 2.0 kilograms of grain per m³ in developed countries (Hat et al., 2018). Han et al. suggest that China ought to be able to make irrigation more efficient, ultimately decreasing the total water used for agricultural purposes while keeping the output the same. Although this would certainly help China approach sustainability, it may not be as feasible as it sounds. Gross (2018) notes that there is no reason to believe that a “rebound effect” would not happen; farmers are likely to produce more crops with the same amount of water as they use today.
Although it may carry geopolitical uncertainties, China may be better off liberalizing its grain trade, if only to decrease the net water used for irrigation. Between 1990 and 2014, per capita grain production and total irrigated land both increased, and agricultural productivity doubled. This has occurred all while the amount of water used per hectare decreased by twenty percent. Despite this, nearly 63.5 percent of China’s water resources were used for agricultural purposes in 2014 (Han et al., 2018). China has made great progress in increasing the efficiency of its irrigation already, and while it has had positive impacts on total grain production, it has not led to a net decrease of water usage. Agricultural water usage has actually increased in the past few years as a result of the completion of irrigation projects, and it appears that China has dedicated itself to utilizing irrigated agriculture in order to provide grain for its population.
Other industries and uses for water are seeing an increase in demand, and assuming the demand for urban water continues to rise (from 1999 to 2015, water used for “living” increased from just over ten percent of total water used to over 13 percent), China’s net water consumption is likely to increase (Han et al., 2018). Considering water has historically been provided for incredibly low cost by the Chinese government, trying to cut down on water usage, particularly in the form of increasing the cost of water, is likely to cause frustration among China’s population. Hofstedt (2010) notes that if water were to be priced based on demand, its price would increase by up to 1,500 percent, adding that for Chinese wheat and corn farmers, irrigation is already 10 percent of their non-labor costs, compared to under 2 percent of non-labor costs in the United States. Even if an increase in the cost of water does not create civil unrest among rural farmers (as Hofstedt suggests it may), it is likely to increase the cost of food for urban residents and encourage rural-to-urban migration. It is critical to note that China’s government is able to maintain “performance legitimacy”, meaning that as long as the central government oversees economic growth and, more importantly, the increase of individual incomes, it is likely to maintain public support (Dickson et al., 2017). Increasing the cost of water would lead to a notable rise in the cost of living across the nation, threatening China’s maintenance of performance legitimacy. Thus, simply balancing the cost of water with market forces is not a practical solution to China’s water issues, and importing grain may be the best option.
There is no doubt that China would experience downsides if it does begin to import large amounts of grain for domestic consumption. Most notably, unemployment in rural areas is likely to skyrocket if the policy were not to propose alternative employment options. China’s rural-to-urban migration rates have surprisingly remained steady and high; World Bank data shows the percentage of Chinese people living in rural areas has decreased from 48.3 percent of the population in 2012 to 38.6 percent in 2020. Hofstedt suggests that encouraging more migration as a result of decreased grain production is likely to cause resentment among both the migrants and those already living in the city. Because China’s social safety net was weakened in the 1990s and early 2000s, migrants are not offered any social services and often end up residing in temporary housing or over-capacity dormitories, and “gangs” of migrants from the same hometowns appear to have formed in order to create support networks (Cannon, 2006). Both Hofstedt and Cannon argue that the government’s failure to respond to rural-to-urban migration has led to the strengthening of group identities, increasing the propensity for group conflict. This increased risk of conflict is likely to continue under current conditions, but will only be heightened by any policy that further increases rural-to-urban migration. Recently, the government has said it will increase funding on welfare and other social services, but the actual plans have not yet been seen. Generally speaking, if China stops subsidizing massive amounts of water used for irrigation, it may have extra funds to put towards public housing or jobs programs. Government investment into the Chinese welfare state will reduce the propensity for conflict, as investment into social services generally allows nations to better manage their water crises (Ohlsson, 2000).
Historically, China’s water legislation has been particularly ineffective, largely because there was no way for the central government to monitor or enforce any new laws, and Beijing passed that duty on to local and provincial governments to monitor (Liu et al., 2012). Han et al. (2018) identify several factors contributing to ineffective water policy: conflicting interests within local government, supervisors of environmentally unfriendly firms abusing their power over regulators, and the lack of equity and citizen empowerment in crafting and enforcing regulations. The first is rather simple; local officials that oversee or regulate polluting industries may also be tasked with enforcing environmental protections. Balancing these two interests is difficult, especially when the locality’s economic growth is also reflective of the officials themselves. In the case of firms in which the government does not have any ownership, this dynamic is slightly different in that the corruption is much more visible. Supervisors may offer “socially useful” information to the regulators in exchange for not enforcing environmental regulations as stringently. Lastly, Han et al. (2018) mention that past water protections were crafted to ensure the sustainability of the Chinese economy and not to protect the population as a whole. There has been little, if any influence from Chinese civil society or NGOs on water policy, and there is reason to believe that these groups would help in the creation and enforcement of effective policy, as they did for China’s response to air pollution in Beijing from 2011 to 2013. During the height of Beijing’s “Airpocalypse”, social media users and the Institute for Public Environment (a Beijing-based nonprofit) were successful in pressuring the Chinese government to take action, for example (Stout, 2013). As a result, China has now made notable strides towards ensuring clean air.
China certainly still has major problems with air pollution, particularly regarding its dependence on coal for 65 percent of electricity (Clemente, 2019). However, China’s air policy has been relatively successful in the past decade, largely due to cooperation between the three levels of Chinese government. The nation’s air policy itself had been largely ignored prior to Xi’s tenure. In 2011, however, the Environmental Protection Law (EPL) began the amendment process. The process was not completed until 2015, but when put into place, the legislation had improved in three key areas: fines for polluters, accountability for public officials, and allowing environmental public interest lawsuits to proceed in court. Economy (2018) highlights the significance of these improvements. Prior to the amendments, fines for over-polluting were restricted to a single payment; polluters tended to pay the fine and continue polluting for the rest of the year. The amendment made these fines per-instance, meaning that polluters would pay for each day they exceeded their legal limit of emissions. The amended law also clarified that promotion decisions would now consider government officials’ adherence to environmental legislation. The amendment regarding public interest lawsuits proved rather influential as well; 48 environmental lawsuits were heard in 2015, compared to a total of 65 lawsuits between 2007 and 2014. Ultimately, the enforcement of air pollution legislation benefited most by having provincial EPBs (Environmental Protection Bureaus) oversee localities directly, instead of through local EPBs, who may have reason to understate the environmental degradation of factories within their constituencies. Based on the relative success of China’s reform to air pollution policy, it is likely that similar reform to China’s water policy would aid the government in regulating water usage in industrial and agricultural industries. This solution, although unlikely to be sufficient in ensuring China’s water usage is sustainable on its own, has very few downsides for the Chinese government. If passed, the reforms may increase the government’s legitimacy in the eyes of its citizens as corrupt officials are replaced with officials who make environmental protection a priority. The only negative externality would be a potential decrease in total economic productivity, although data suggests the government derives its legitimacy from increased individual incomes, not economic growth in general (Dickson et al., 2017).
The third feasible solution for China would be to become more aggressive in damming rivers that flow elsewhere in Asia. China has already begun to assert its control over the rivers originating in the Tibetan Plateau (see fig. 2), as seen in both the 2014 construction of the Zangmu Dam on the Brahmaputra River, which flows into India, and the restriction of the Mekong River, which provides water for tens of millions of people in southeast Asia, in the spring of 2020. It is worth noting that China did not ignore any treaties in either case; China has outright refused to commit to any long term water-sharing agreements (Subramanian, 2019). In the case of the Mekong, China did not have any particular reason to dam the river, as American satellite data later revealed that China’s claims of experiencing a similar drought were unfounded, and the Tibetan Plateau held normal water levels (Beech, 2020). Alongside China’s recent aggression on this front, China could build dozens more strategic dams in order to retain water if demand requires it, causing droughts throughout Asia. How the international community would react is unclear; Hofstedt (2010) notes that all but one of the rivers originating in the Himalayas begins in Tibet, and therefore any military pushback from neighboring nations intending to stop China from diverting water would be considered an act of aggression. Perhaps the international community could pressure China into signing a water-sharing agreement, but as China’s water crisis worsens, outcomes do not look favorable for the nations dependent on rivers beginning in the Tibetan Plateau.
Barring the unlikely case of military action from China’s neighbors, any conflict is likely to rise domestically. China has seen little water-related conflict in its cities, largely because it has yet to see a major drought that has restricted citizen access to water. In rural areas, however, water-related conflict erupted into violence on several occasions in the last fifty years. Cannon (2006) provides a list of the more recent instances; the vast majority have been in northern China and have been between neighboring villages over river access, some of which resulted in the formation of militias. In the past fifteen years, no similar conflict has occurred, suggesting that China’s investment into irrigation infrastructure, even prior to the South-North Water Transfer Project, has been successful in avoiding conflict in rural areas. As water once again becomes more scarce in the countryside, however, group conflict may rise. Due to China having no recent history of urban water-related conflict, projecting how conflict would arise is a bit more difficult. Hofstedt (2010) found it plausible that any government action to preserve water may lead citizens to view the government unfavorably, and that pro-democracy or business groups may use these attitudes to change the political system to one which better suits them. Much like the 1989 student movement, which was originally about inflation and the condition of student dormitories, the government may respond with repression. I find that this is the most likely scenario for widespread domestic conflict to occur in China, although isolated conflict may occur in rural regions if local leaders are not held accountable by the central government.
Although the Chinese government appears to be stable and maintains an abnormally high amount of public support for an authoritarian regime (Dickson et al., 2017), China is susceptible to varying forms of water-related conflict in the coming years. This conflict may be highly localized, due to neighboring villages competing over the already limited water supply. It may become more widespread if, as Hofstedt (2010) suggests, the Chinese government’s future water control measures are unpopular, leading various political groups to seek to change China’s governance model. While this outcome appears highly unlikely as of right now, Beijing’s inaction in the past twenty years will force the government to take even more drastic steps to ensure China has a stable water supply in the years to come, perhaps losing public support in the process. In order to decrease the propensity for violence in the coming years, China ought to both reform the enforcement mechanism for its current water legislation and cut domestic grain production by increasing imports. This must coincide with investment into public services, especially housing, as urban-to-rural migration rates are likely to rise as a result of decreased grain production. If Beijing continues to ignore the water crisis, it will be forced to take more aggressive action, further placing dams on the rivers originating in the Tibetan Plateau that provide water for other Asian nations. This is likely to increase the existing strain on relations between China and its neighbors, and perhaps the international community at large.
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