Water Stress in North China and the History of one Proposal to Re... http://members.aol.com/anglochine/nsbd.

htm

NAN SHUI BEI DIAO

CHINA’S SOUTH-NORTH WATER TRANSFER
PROJECT

Introduction Conception Map of Proposed Routes

Suspension Revival The Three Routes Compared

Choice of Routes Eastern Route Chosen Middle Route Preferred

Continued Debate Conclusion References

Introduction
This paper attempts to sketch the history of one project intended to increase the availability of water
resources in northern China. It deliberately does not look at the overall balance of water
requirements and water resources within the region, nor consider other means of achieving the
objective, except insofar as these affect policy for this project. My objective in writing this paper
was to find explanations, preferably geographical ones, for policy making in this area, but the
resources available have provided data that lead to as many unanswered questions as conclusions.

China’s average perennial water resource (surface water and groundwater) is 2.8 trillion m3, making
the country rank sixth in the world, when it is the third largest in area. However, with a population
of 1.2bn (1995), the per capita resource is 2,344 m3, ranking 88th in the world and only 30 per cent
of the world average. If that were not bad enough, the resources are very unevenly distributed. In the
regions around and to the south of the Changjiang (Yangtze River), 55 per cent of the population
and less than 40 per cent of arable land enjoy over 80 per cent of the total water resources, leaving
the remaining 45 per cent of the population and 60 per cent of the arable land to get by on only 20
per cent of the water resources (Wei, 1996: 77).

Much of the area north and northwest of the Changjiang is desert, but the North China Plain,
including Beijing and Tianjin, the Shandong peninsula and the Loess Plateau, contain 38 per cent of
China’s arable land and receive 6.7 per cent of China’s total water run-off (Chen Shouqi 1995: 4).
Demands for water for agriculture, industry and household consumption could only be met by

1 of 12 12/16/04 7:41 AM
Water Stress in North China and the History of one Proposal to Re... http://members.aol.com/anglochine/nsbd.htm

drawing on groundwater, causing falling water tables across the region and widespread subsidence
under many cities and by increasing the rate of extraction from rivers, leaving many of them without
water in dry seasons (Edmonds 1994:116).

Conception
The idea of relieving this situation by transferring a large volume of water from the basin of the
Changjiang and its tributaries, seen as south China, to the Huanghe (Yellow River) basin and the
North China Plain appears to have originated in the early 1950s. Chinese accounts of the project
even as recently as 1997 attributed the conception of the idea to Mao Zedong, who - as the legend
has it - during a visit to water conservancy works on the Changjiang in 1952 remarked that water
resources were more plentiful in south China and suggested that the north should borrow some of
this water if it were possible(Tong 1997: 44). A history of water conservancy works on the
Huanghe written in the late 1970s by the American hydrologist Charles Greer after prolonged study
trips to China, placed the scheme in the context of the large-scale capital projects planned with Soviet
technical assistance in the 1950s and said that the head of the Soviet water conservancy delegation
stated in 1959 that the development of irrigation in north China required new water supply
undertakings (Greer 1979: 55).

Nevertheless, as evidence for Soviet involvement in the conception of the project, this is less than
convincing; Greer himself showed that the scheme had been been mentioned in the Huanghe
development plan of 1955. By 1958 consideration of the scheme was sufficiently far advanced for
transfer of water from the Changjiang river system to north China to be made a high priority
objective by a national meeting on directives for water conservancy work. It was at this meeting that
the project was given the name nan shui bei diao, the term which is still commonly used in China to
describe the whole scheme (Chen Shouqi1995: 4).

This decision was followed in 1959 by large-scale survey work which produced four possible
routes (Greer 1979: 58-60). Two of them involved transfers from tributaries of the upper
Changjiang in Qinghai or Sichuan provinces. These routes, which have been radically revised after
subsequent repeated surveys of the area, have become known as the "Western Route". The third,
later called the "Middle Route" or the "Central Route" involved a new canal from the Sanxia (Three
Gorges) dam on the Changjiang to the Danjiangkou reservoir on the Hanshui river and then via
Zhengzhou in Henan to Beijing. The fourth, later called the "Eastern Route", used the old Grand
Canal to take water from the lower Changjiang to Tianjin. These routes, which have remained the
basis for later discussions of the project, are shown on the sketch map below.

South-North Water Transfer Proposed Routes

2 of 12 12/16/04 7:41 AM
Water Stress in North China and the History of one Proposal to Re... http://members.aol.com/anglochine/nsbd.htm

Greer’s sources told him that at the time the version marked 1b on the map, which comprised a canal
6,800km long, was seen as the most interesting as it would have meant building dams hundreds of
metres tall in the narrow gorges of the Changjiang’s tributaries holding reservoirs so elevated that
large volumes of water could have been transferred to Qinghai, Ningxia and Inner Mongolia. Greer
implies that the interest was generated by the sheer scale of the civil engineering works involved, but
part of the interest in this project may have been related to the national leadership’s objective in the
1950s of encouraging development in China’s north and northwest, which had produced such
efforts as the Baotou steel works and the railway line from there to Lanzhou.

Suspension
In the event, work on the transfer was abandoned during the economic retrenchment after the failure
of the Great Leap Forward. Instead, the vigorous exploitation of north China’s own water resources
that had started in the 1950s proved able to meet the area’s water needs during the 1960s. Tube
wells watered farmland, irrigation schemes used water from the rivers, and the needs of the rapidly
growing cities of Beijing and Tianjin were supplied by groundwater and by new reservoirs in the
hills north of Beijing. The success of these measures appeared to make larger projects unnecessary.
Greer says that when the completion of the Danjiangkou reservoir - a component of the Middle
Route - was announced in 1974, he was assured by a senior Chinese official that China had no plans
for inter-basin water transfers (Greer 1979: 60).

Given the lengthy process through which proposed projects had to go before they were fully
approved and entered the national plan, this answer was probably technically correct. However, it
was incomplete because later accounts make clear that though the project may have been shelved it
was not forgotten. A Chinese magazine article of 1974 referred to it as a long-term project "still at
the blueprint stage" (Xinhua 1974: 19). More recent Chinese accounts say that the Western Route
was surveyed afresh in the 1970s (Chen Shouqi 1995: 5), and that detailed research on the Eastern
Route started in 1973 (Chen & Yang 1979: 1).

The latter may have been inspired by water conservancy work on the southern part of the middle
section of the Grand Canal since the 1950s which both indicated the possibility of the route and
carried out preparatory work on part of it. In the 1950s the Grand Canal in northern Jiangsu was
dredged and embanked to be used as a flood diversion channel in the water conservancy system
covering that area and the neighbouring parts of Anhui and Shandong provinces (Jing 1990: 23),
and in the 1960s the Jiangdu pumping station was built where the canal joins the Changjiang, to

3 of 12 12/16/04 7:41 AM
Water Stress in North China and the History of one Proposal to Re... http://members.aol.com/anglochine/nsbd.htm

transfer water between the canal and the river. The station had a dual function, to take water out of
the canal in flood years and pump water into it in drought years. The incoming water was taken by
the canal to feed irrigation schemes in northern Jiangsu; so worthwhile was the operation that the
station was enlarged in the 1970s (Xinhua 1974: 19). Not publicised at the time as part of the
full-scale nan shui bei diao project, these works were later claimed as preparation for it (Chen
Shangkui 1990: 3).

Meanwhile, by the 1970s development of industry and agriculture in northern China was increasing
demand beyond the available resources. The most striking evidence was the emergency measure
adopted in the severe drought of 1973 to supply water from the Huanghe to Tianjin via smaller
watercourses crossing the North China Plain, including the northern section of the Grand Canal
(Xinhua 1974: 19). Once again this indicated the possibility of the larger-scale transfer. In 1977
north China suffered another serious drought which affected agriculture very badly (Fighting
Drought 1977: 5).

Revival
The national policy environment also changed in the late 1970s, ambitious construction projects
were back in favour as part of the Four Modernisations. In this atmosphere nan shui bei diao was
once again actively considered; to "undertake projects to divert water from the Yangtze to areas
north of the Yellow River" was included in the outline of the Ten-Year Plan for the Development of
the National Economy included in Hua Guofeng’s Report to the National People’s Congress in
February 1978 (Hua 1978: 23).

Whatever the reasons that brought the project back onto the national agenda, the decision seems to
have come as no surprise to the relevant government departments as they were able to initiate action
on the project straightaway. A team from the State Planning Commission and the State Construction
Commission lead by a Vice-Minister of the Ministry of Water Conservancy and Power conducted a
formal reconnaissance of the Eastern Route in May, June and July 1978 with officials of the
provincial- level governments that would be affected, Jiangsu, Anhui, Shandong, Hebei and Tianjin.
Not surprisingly, the reconnaissance established that the route was feasible and could be quickly
undertaken (Chen Shangkui 1978: 3).

The reconnaissance report was not the end of discussion as the project itself and the decision to go
ahead with the Eastern Route provoked an intense debate within the Chinese scientific community
on the environmental and other issues involved (Smil 1993: 153). At the start of the reform period in
1979, many of the more ambitious projects of the previous year or two were scaled back and the
national leadership may have been glad to seize the opportunity offered by the debate of delaying the
water transfer project. Detailed consideration of the proposal was delegated to the Chinese Hydraulic
Engineering Society, which held a series of meetings to consider plans of the project (Discussions
on Diverting 1979: 6).

Accounts of the project published at this time gave a choice of three routes for the transfer rather
than the Greer’s four. The Eastern and Middle Routes are largely as described by Greer, though at
this time the Middle Route just started from an enlarged Danjiangkou, with no feed from the Sanxia
Dam reservoir. However, the Western Route, probably as a result of the new survey, had changed
radically. Its most common form was three separate dams on tributaries of the Changjiang linked by
short canals and pooling their water into a tunnel or tunnels through which water would be pumped
to join the Huanghe, which in the area of the transfers is at an elevation considerably higher than the
tributaries from which water would be drawn (Chen & Yang 1979: 1).

Although a recent Chinese account of the project says that the longer version of the Western Route

4 of 12 12/16/04 7:41 AM
Water Stress in North China and the History of one Proposal to Re... http://members.aol.com/anglochine/nsbd.htm

was not given serious consideration after the end of the 1950s as it was too ambitious (Chen Shouqi
1995: 6), echoes of it appeared in a few descriptions of the Western Route, including one reference
in which the scheme was extended westwards to take water from the Nujiang - the upper Salween -
and the Lancang - the upper Mekong - as well as several tributaries of the Changjiang giving a
project that would have transferred water between four major river basins (Chen & Yang 1979: 1).
Although this version of the route is never mentioned again, longer and larger variants of the
Western Route are still being proposed (He 1999).

With the more ambitious version of the Western Route not being given serious consideration, the
debate, then and subsequently, looked at the three remaining routes which are summarised below.

The Three Routes Compared

EASTERN MIDDLE WESTERN

Areas benefiting Jiangsu Henan Gansu

Shandong Hebei Ningxia
Hebei Beijing Inner Mongolia
Tianjin Tianjin Shaanxi

Vol. of Water Taken 19bn m3 n/g n/g

Volume delivered 14bn m3 (1979)10bn m3, 20bn m3

(1997)14bn m3

Length (km) 1,130 km 1,236 km* 320 km

Capital Cost (1995) Yn20bn Yn40bn n/g

Cost per M3 Water (1998) < Yn5 Yn5 Yn10

n/g = not given in my sources

Note: Length of Middle Route is from Danijiangkou to Beijing only and does not include the
proposed feeder from the Three Gorges Reservoir.

In the Hydrological Society meetings, opponents of the project argued that it was not needed yet,
that north China should continue to develop its own water resources before starting inter-basin
transfer. Others who opposed the project may have joined the significant numbers who raised points
related to the feasibility and the environmental impact of the project on which more research was
required before the project went ahead. Nevertheless, and perhaps not surprisingly given the clear
indication of the government’s will in this matter, the majority of participants concluded that the
project was required and should go ahead immediately (Discussions on Diverting 1979: 7).

5 of 12 12/16/04 7:41 AM
Water Stress in North China and the History of one Proposal to Re... http://members.aol.com/anglochine/nsbd.htm

Choice of routes
The choice of routes, however, was not so easily made. The Western Route was decided to be too
costly and too complicated to be undertaken at that time (Kao 1978: 7). As well, it may be significant
that it would supply water to north-western China, while the immediate concern of national policy-
makers was probably the problem of water stress in north China. No-one pointed out that the formal
objective was to supply water "north of the Yellow River" which the Western Route would not do.
Kept as an option in subsequent discussions, it is usually mentioned as a possible future project to
be actively considered after the other two routes are completed.

However, consensus broke down in consideration of the other two routes and arguments advanced
in support of or in opposition to them were and are more lengthy and more detailed, suggesting that
they have been more carefully considered. The principal argument for the Middle Route was that it
had a drop of over 100m from Danjiangkou to Beijing, and it would be possible to build the canal so
that gravity would take the water to Beijing. Against it were the facts that it would be more
expensive because the whole line of the canal - which would cross numerous roads, railway lines
and rivers, including the Huanghe - and its intermediate storage reservoirs would have to be built
from scratch, and displaced population would have to be relocated. To prevent the area around
Danjiangkou losing water supplies and thus hydro-electricity to Beijing, the dam would have to be
heightened and the reservoir enlarged, involving further significant expenditure and relocation of
affected population (Chen & Yang 1979: 7).

The advantages of the Eastern Route were that the existing infrastructure of the Grand Canal and its
associated lakes would reduce both construction costs and the need to relocate population away from
its path, the work already done on the middle section of the Canal demonstrated the practicability of
the route, and a restored Grand Canal would be available for transport (Kao 1978:8). This last point
was seized on by the Ministry of Communications and in the over-excited atmosphere of the late
1970s, a national conference on developing water and road transport held at Daqing in the summer
of 1978 made a renovated Grand Canal linking Beijing to a national network of waterways covering
the three major rivers of China one of its key points (Lo 1978: 35).

The principal technical criticism of the Eastern Route was that the line of the route rose some 40m
from the intake point on the Changjiang to the point where it crossed the Huanghe and that pumping
the water up this gradient would take a lot of electricity (Chen & Yang 1979: 2) - at that time and
even into the 1990s the problem was not just the cost but also the availability of the amount of
power required (Chen Shouqi 1995: 7). There were also serious doubts about the environmental
impact of the Eastern Route, which at that time focused on water seeping from the canal bed raising
the water table and thus increasing the salinity of the soil; this was already a significant problem in
areas it crossed (Discussions on Diverting 1979: 7).

Eastern route chosen

Nevertheless, planning for the Eastern Route continued and 1983 the State Council approved a
feasibility study for its first phase, to pump water from the Changjiang to Jining in southern
Shandong province (Li Rongxia1988: 21). Although presented as part of the overall scheme, it
could stand alone as a self-contained project. It would enlarge the irrigated area in northern Jiangsu
and extend it northward into southern Shandong. Perhaps just as important was the improvement of
navigation in this section, as the reconnaissance team reported seeing huge piles of coal waiting
shipment to Shanghai which could not be moved because of lack of water in the Canal (Chen
Shanqkui 1978:2). The object was to make the Canal navigable all the year round up to Jining and to

6 of 12 12/16/04 7:41 AM
Water Stress in North China and the History of one Proposal to Re... http://members.aol.com/anglochine/nsbd.htm

enlarge the section from Xuzhou southwards by dredging and widening the channel and enlarging
the ship locks along its length (Deng 1983: 31).

Improvement in navigability up to Xuzhou was included in the Sixth Five Year Plan (1981-85),
with the target of doubling the coal carrying capacity of the section by 1985, while the whole first
stage of the water transfer project was expected to be completed by 1990 (Sixth Five Year Plan
1983). An account of development in northern Jiangsu written in 1989 said that work on renovating
the Grand Canal in the area had started in 1982 and been completed by 1988, and the figure given
for the current volume of freight traffic was equal to the target figure in the Sixth Five Year Plan (Li
Jianguo 1989: 15). This accords with my recollections of newspaper reports in the 1980s of
improvements in the navigability of this section of the Canal.

I think the emphasis on transport in this stage of the project is significant. The principal objective of
railway development in the 1980s was to improve movement of coal from north China to east China.
I would therefore argue that the principal reason for the Grand Canal scheme was transport, rather
than water. Certainly, this work went ahead before the plans for water transfer were finalised,
though navigability depended on pumping water up the Canal to maintain water levels and reports of
work in progress showed pumping stations being built, apparently for this purpose (Deng 1983:
27-29). However a later discussion of the problems of the Eastern Route said that maintaining
navigability needed one-tenth of the pumping required for the transfer scheme (Chen Shouqi 1995:
7).

A 1988 account of progress on the scheme said that a blueprint for works for the first stage of the
Eastern Route had been just been submitted to the State Council for final approval (Li Rongxia
1998: 21). In this blueprint, just over half of the total volume of water planned for the completed
route would have been pumped up to Jining. The same account said that in the next stage of the
project the water would cross the Huanghe through a tunnel under the river bed. The report did not
say how boats would cross the river, leaving the implication that that ambition had been abandoned.
This blueprint evidently was not approved; in 1990, Yao Bangyi, senior engineer in charge of the
design of the project, was reported as saying that a general plan of the project was being reviewed
and a revised version would soon be finalised by which water from the Changjiang would reach the
Huanghe by the end of the century. However he added that, of the three routes, the Eastern Route
was likely to be the first to be started (Dong 1990: 29).

However, this revised version of the scheme apparently made very little progress. In 1991, one of
the targets in the Eighth Five Year Plan was "projects to divert water from the south to the north to
be speeded up" (CPC Central Committee’s Proposals 1991:19), and the same objective was
included in the 1993 Annual Plan (Zou 1993: 16). Some preparatory work was done, however, thus
a report on key national construction projects in that same year said that designs had been completed
for transferring water to north China via the Grand Canal (Wu 1993: 13) and in 1994 it was reported
that a report of the feasibility study for this route had been approved in September 1993 (Li Rongxia
1994: 8). Presumably this delay was acceptable to the leadership, certainly the immediate shortage
had been eased by bringing water from northeastern Hebei to supply Tianjin, though less urgent
problems of over-extraction of groundwater remained common throughout north China and several
cities experienced subsidence problems as water tables fell (Edmonds 1994: 117).

Middle route preferred

Meanwhile, work continued on other routes. A news report in 1990 said that the Ministry of Water
Resources had approved preliminary plans for the Western Route drawn up after further surveys in
Qinghai and Sichuan during 1988 and that design work for the route would be completed by 1995
(Diversion Project 1990: 7). In the 1980s, the Changjiang Valley Planning Office had supported the

7 of 12 12/16/04 7:41 AM
Water Stress in North China and the History of one Proposal to Re... http://members.aol.com/anglochine/nsbd.htm

Middle Route as the potential link with the Sanxia Dam reservoir provided another argument in
favour of that project (Lampton 1987: 157). An account written in 1995 said that a plan and
feasibility report for the Middle Route had been drawn up over the previous few years (Chen
Shouqi 1995: 7). However this was not widely reported at the time and after the Eastern Route had
featured in the State Planning Commission’s 1993 plan for capital construction (Wu 1993: 13), the
inclusion of preparatory work for the Middle Route in the 1994 Annual Plan came as a surprise
(Chen Jinhua 1994: 24).

Throughout the history of the project, discussion of the options had been based on the premise that
funding constraints meant that only one route could be constructed at a time. Now the Deputy
Director of the Planning Office for the South-North Water Diversion Project, Kang Wenlong, was
reported as saying that all indications were that the Middle Route might be selected (Li Rongxia
1994: 9). Although the Eastern Route seemed economically advantageous, delivering more water
along its route for about half the initial capital cost, the Middle Route promised greater economic
benefits in the area along its path and the provinces of Hebei and Henan were reported to be offering
substantial financial assistance for the construction.

The arguments against the Eastern Route advanced by the deputy director were the need for
pumping to raise water up to cross the Huanghe and pollution, the only new argument to enter the
debate since it started in 1979. Some of the water courses that the transferred water would cross or
pass through in the course of its journey north were heavily polluted and so the water would become
contaminated (Chen Shouqi.1995:7)

The Middle Route mentioned at this time was the route from an enlarged Danjiangkou reservoir to
Beijing, but discussions of the project also mentioned a long-term plan to supply Danjiangkou from
the Sanxia Dam reservoir on the Changjiang (Li Rongxia 1994:8), and it is hard to resist the
conclusion that this prospect was a significant factor in making the Middle Route attractive to policy
makers. Certainly the method and route of such a transfer have been considered in detail, even
before either the reservoir was completed or the Middle Route itself has been built (Shao 1998).

Again a new policy was not the end of the story. This announcement seems to have sparked
arguments about the choice of route which surfaced in the press (Chen Shouqi 1995: 7) and a
conference held in November 1995 to discuss and settle the disagreements over the project resulted
in yet another overall feasibility study of all three routes being commissioned (Information Office of
the State Council 1996: viii). By now the objective of the scheme was defined as "to ease water
shortages in Beijing, Tianjin, and North China", a formula which makes clear the priorities of
national policy in this area. The study concluded that the Middle Route remained the first choice, and
a feasibility study of this route was included in a report submitted by the Ministry of Water
Resources to the State Planning Commission in 1997. The commission’s response was to set up a
committee composed of experts from the affected provinces and cities to examine the report (Tong
1997: 45).

Continued debate
The debate over choice of routes was not concluded, as supporters of all three routes continued to
make their cases. The prolonged suspension of flow of the Huanghe in 1997 - with no water at all
over the lower reaches for over 200 days - had serious economic implications for Shandong
province, which by then depended on the river for 40 per cent of its total water supplies. Not
surprisingly in 1998 voices from within the province were heard calling for the initiation of the
Eastern Route as it could directly replace the lost water from the river (Xinhua 1998)(Hu & Ding
1998). They appear to have had some effect because when the committee reported later in 1998, it
was said to have completed a study of the Middle and Eastern Routes (Shao 1998). However, the

8 of 12 12/16/04 7:41 AM
Water Stress in North China and the History of one Proposal to Re... http://members.aol.com/anglochine/nsbd.htm

conclusion reached was that the balance of advantage lay with the Middle Route, for the reasons
previously given.

Supporters of the Western Route were not silenced by this. Later in 1998, the chief engineer of the
Institute of Water Resources, a research establishment under the Ministry, used the debate over the
Huanghe to say that only the Western Route would benefit the whole course of the river (Xiong
1998). Early in 1999, Qinghai province began pressing within the formal structures of political
consultation for activation of a western route. This scheme, which was claimed to have been worked
out with the Ministry of Water Resources, would have piped "over 110 billion m3 of water a year"
from the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau "to drought-stricken northern areas" (He 1999). Qinghai’s attempt
to revive interest in the western route came at a time when the central government was attaching
greater importance to development of central and western regions of China and when the Changjiang
flooding had prompted the government to initiate programmes to protect and improve the
environment in the province.

Nevertheless informed opinion outside China considered that Qinghai would have to wait. The
World Bank’s water expert, Daniel Gunaratnum, said in December 1998 that debate was still raging
over which route to build first. He was confident that ultimately all three routes would be built, and
that rather than pick one to start, construction of the Eastern and Middle Routes might proceed
simultaneously, with work starting in 2000 and continuing for between seven and 10 years to be
followed later by the Western Route. Inside China, there was less certainty over the prospects for the
scheme as a whole. The Vice Minister for Water Resources, speaking at a symposium held in March
1999 to mark World Water Day - 22 April - said that "studies would be conducted to determine the
feasibility of diverting water from the Yangtze River to the drought-prone north" (Liang 1999).

The vice-minister’s remarks appeared to return the project to the status it had previously reached in
1990, or even 1979. I have seen no further statement of policy on the subject and we are left to
speculate how much of the work of the past twenty years is to be redone. The announcement also
raises the question of why the project, which has been declared essential for the economic
development of China, has made so little concrete progress.

Conclusion
The preceding narrative indicates how, for the first 30 years of its life, the project fitted into the
wider picture of China’s policy on major capital construction projects. Initial conception in the
1950s, suspension of work in the 1960s, revival of interest in the 1970s, plans for rapid progress in
the late 1970s, and a slowing of progress at the start of the reform period can be paralleled in other
projects such as the construction of dams on the Huanghe and fit into an overall picture of the
changes in the tempo of China’s development over that period. On another plane, the phases of
interest and urgency attached to the project by policy makers over that period appear to be related to
a perception of a water shortage crisis in north China, particularly in Beijing and Tianjin, and lack of
interest at other times to alleviation of the situation by other measures. In a similar fashion, progress
appears to come when other interests are actively interested, such as the improvement to the
navigation over the middle section of the Grand Canal.

What this analysis fails to do is explain why the project has been delayed since the mid 1980s, when
other large water conservancy projects have been successfully activated and entered construction -
e.g. the Sanxia Dam - and when the water shortage in north China has become a staple of journalism
(e.g Deng 1994: 44-47). Opposition to the principle of the project appears to have largely died
down, as the inadequacy of the region’s existing water resources has become more evident. Even
those who argue that the water north China already has should be used more efficiently and more
effectively, are now also conceding that the size of the problem - a recent estimate put the total

9 of 12 12/16/04 7:41 AM
Water Stress in North China and the History of one Proposal to Re... http://members.aol.com/anglochine/nsbd.htm

annual water deficit for the region as 70 million cubic metres (Shao 1998) - makes the scheme
necessary at least in the long term (Galloway 1998).

I venture to suggest that the delay cannot be blamed on lack of preparatory work. By the autumn of
1998, a team of over 100 experts and officials was working under the direction of the chief engineer
of the Ministry of Water Resources on the proposals for the project (Shao 1998), some of them for
their whole working lives (Xiong 1998). Reviewing the history of the project, what seems to me to
be significant is the competition between the supporters of the different routes that breaks out
whenever a strategic decision is required to advance the project. The provinces and cities that would
benefit from the decision to build a route appear to be engaged in lobbying for that route, taking
advantage of any changes in the external situation - the Sanxia Dam, the exhaustion of the Huanghe
- that would help their cause. They also offer more obvious support for their desired option. The
financial contribution to the capital cost promised by Henan and Hebei provinces entered into the
calculations of the central government that lead to the adoption of the Middle Route in the early
1990s, though advocacy of other routes appears to have stopped progress in that direction. Perhaps
the World Bank’s expert was right, and only deciding to build the Eastern and Middle Routes
simultaneously would produce enough support for the project to get construction started.

Paper presented at East Asian Research Conference, University of Sheffield, July 1999.

Back to top of page

References
Chen Jinhua. (1994) "Report on the Implementation of the 1993 Plan for National Economic and
Social Development and the Draft 1994 Plan" Beijing Review, 11-17/04/1994 pp 21- 29.

Chen Shangkui. (1978) "Nanshui Beidiao Gongcheng Kancha Ji" (Record of the Reconnaissance of
the South-North Water Transfer Project) Dilizhishi no 11 pp 1-3.

Chen Shangkui. (1990) "Woguo Shuili Shiye Chengji Zhuozhu" (Outstanding Successes in China’s
Water Conservancy Undertakings), Dilizhishi No 4, pg 3.

Chen Shangkui and Yang Xiuwei. (1979) "Gaizao Ziran de Hongwei Shiye" (A Magnificent
Undertaking of Transforming Nature), Dilizhishi No 6, pp1-2.

Chen Shouqi (1995), "Nanshuibeidiao de Shexiang he Xianshi" (South-North Water Transfer, the
idea and its realisation), Dilizhishi No. 5: pp 4-7.

"CPC Central Committee’s Proposals for Ten Year Development Programme and Eighth Five Year
Plan". (1991) Beijing Review 18/02-03/03/1991 pp 17-23.

Deng Shulin. (1983) "The Grand Canal Still Grand" China Reconstructs September pp 26-31.

Deng Shulin. (1994) "Water Shortages in China’s Cities" China Today April pp 44-47.

10 of 12 12/16/04 7:41 AM
Water Stress in North China and the History of one Proposal to Re... http://members.aol.com/anglochine/nsbd.htm

"Discussions on Diverting Waters of the Changjiang To the North" Beijing Review 11/5/79 pp 6-7.

"Diversion Project Gets a Blueprint". (1990) Beijing Review 10-16/09/1990 pg7.

Dong Shi. (1990) "Water Crisis in North China and Counter-Measures" Beijing Review
02-08/04/1990 pp27-29.

Edmonds, Richard Louis. (1994), Patterns of China’s Lost Harmony, London, Routledge.

"Fighting Drought". (1977) Peking Review 25/03/1977, pg 5.

Galloway, Colin. (1998) "Wet south to ease northern thirst" South China Morning Post Internet
Edition 10/12/1998.

Greer, Charles. (1979) Water Management in the Yellow River Basin of China, Austin, University
of Texas Press.

He Sheng. (1999) "Diverting water may help beat shortages" China Daily Internet Edition 09/03/99.

Hu Lijie & Ding Yaqing. (1998) "Drastic measures to keep river flowing" China Daily Internet
Edition 02/04/1998.

Hua Guofeng. (1978) "Unite and Strive to Build a Modern Powerful Socialist Country: Report on
the Work of the Government Delivered at the First Session of the Fifth National People’s Congress
on 26 February 1978" Peking Review 10/03/1978 pp 7-40.

Information Office of the State Council. (1996) "Environmental Protection in China" Beijing Review
June 17-23, 1996 pp i-xvi.

Jing Jie. (1990) "Sun Yat-sen’s Dream and China’s Reality", Beijing Review 1- 7/10/1990, pp
17-24.

Kao Hsia. (1978) "Yangtze Waters Diverted to North China" Peking Review 22/9/78 pp 6-9.

Lampton, David M. (1987) "Water: challenge to a fragmented political system’ in David M Lampton
(ed) Policy Implementation in Post-Mao China pp 157-189 Berkeley: University of California
Press, quoted by (Edmonds 1994: 118)

Li Jianguo. (1989) "Changes in Northern Jiangsu" China Reconstructs July pp 13-15.

Li Rongxia. (1988) "Large Water Diversion Project Underway" Beijing Review, 29/06-03/07/1988
pp 20-22.

Li Rongxia. (1994) "Extensive Water Diversion Project" Beijing Review, 17- 23/10/1994 pp7-9.

Liang Chao. (1999) "Crisis calls mark World Water Day" China Daily Internet Edition 23/03/1999.

Lo Fu. (1978) "Strive for Modernisation of Water and Road Transport" Peking Review 07/07/1978
pp 33-36.

Shao Ning. (1998) "Scientists: water transfer feasible" China Daily Internet Edition 20/07/1998.

"Sixth Five Year Plan of the People’s Republic of China for Economic and Social Development".
(1983) Beijing Review, 30/05/1983.

Smil, Vaclav. (1993) China’s Environmental Crisis, New York M E Sharpe.

11 of 12 12/16/04 7:41 AM
Water Stress in North China and the History of one Proposal to Re... http://members.aol.com/anglochine/nsbd.htm

Tong Shenzhong. (1997) "The Grand Water Project" China Today, July, pp 44- 45.

Wei Xue (1996), "Zhongguo Jingji Fazhanzhong de Shuiziyuan Wenti Fenxi" translated as "Water
Resources and Economic Development in China", China Economic Studies vol. 29 no. 1,
January-February 1996: pp 76-95.

Wu Naitao. (1993) "China Expands Construction of Key Projects" Beijing Review,

28/03-03/04/1993 pp13-16.

Xinhua. (1974) "Harnessing China’s Rivers" Peking Review no. 49, pp 15- 19.

Xinhua (1998) "Speed water diversion project, says deputy" China Daily Internet Edition 06/03/98.

Xiong Lei. (1998) "Yellow River: nation’s sorrow" China Daily Internet Edition 16/10/1998.

Zou Jiahua. (1993) "Report on National Social and Economic Development for 1992 and the Draft
1993 Plan" Beijing Review 19-25/04/1993 pp12-19.

Back to top of page

12 of 12 12/16/04 7:41 AM