China’s water security dilemma

WRITTEN BY ZENEL GARCIA AND PHILLIP GUERREIRO

28 November 2022

China’s recent historic heat waves and droughts have demonstrated the country’s vulnerabilities to climate change and have exposed the clear shortcomings of its water management policy. In particular, these events signalled that Beijing’s inability to address the country’s chronic water scarcity problems will have exponentially detrimental effects on its environment, economy, society, and neighbours.

Currently, China has roughly 20 per cent of the world’s population but only 7-9 per cent of the world’s freshwater resources, resulting in a total water renewable resource per capita (the rate measuring how much of the used water is renewable annually) that is about 75 per cent lower than the global average. This issue is compounded by the uneven distribution of water resources in China itself. The north of China, which possesses 50 per cent of the population and around 60 per cent of the cropland, relies on a mere 20 per cent of its freshwater resources, while 80 per cent of China’s freshwater is located in the south. As a result, China has a water scarcity issue due to the disconnect between the location of its water resources, its population, and agricultural centres. Chinese officials have sought to address these scarcity issues through major water diversion projects, and while these projects have alleviated some of the water stress in the north, recent events put into question their sustainability as climate change effects exacerbate existing problems.

Climate change may make mega-project obsolete before its completion

The South-North Water Diversion Project (SNWDP) was meant to alleviate water demands in northern China by diverting water from the Yangtze River in the south. This water diversion plan has been discussed since the 1950s when Mao Zedong highlighted China’s water scarcity issues by stating that “water in the south is abundant, water in the north scarce. If possible, it would be fine to borrow a little”. However, the SNWDP did not come to fruition until a series of droughts hit northern China in the 1990s. The project is made up of three routes: an Eastern route carrying water from the Yangtze to Tianjin, a Central route carrying water from the Han River (a tributary of the Yangtze) to Beijing and Tianjin, and a Western route intended to transport water from the Yangtze in the Himalayan plateau to the Yellow River. While the East and Centre routes are operational, the Western route is still under consideration and in the planning phase. The project has an estimated cost of USD 62 billion and will have the capacity to transfer 44.8 billion cubic meters of water every year once the Western route is completed.

The current approach has resulted in a water policy that has had a detrimental impact on regional water security and social stability, thus heightening tensions in the region.

So far, the completed sections have provided water-scarce northern China greater access to freshwater and have replenished some of its depleted groundwater reserves. As a result, these northern regions use less energy on extracting and stressing current groundwater sources. However, while the increased access to freshwater in drought-impacted regions is a clear benefit for those in the north, there are a considerable number of concerns about this mega-project. Most importantly, the success of the SNWDP in alleviating the northern droughts is predicated on the Yangtze being a stable source of water. While this seemed plausible in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the current realities of a changing climate have undermined these arguments.

China has seen a record number of climate change-related impacts in 2022: in August, the Yangtze dried up due to a drought caused by a long-running heat wave. As a result, hydropower stations that depend on consistent flow from the Yangtze could not produce adequate amounts of power when demand increased. Sichuan province, which depends on hydropower for 80 per cent of its power supply, is now potentially looking at a difficult winter as water reservoirs are depleted. The heat wave also generated two straight weeks of daily temperatures surpassing 40 degrees celsius, resulting in forest fires that exacerbated China’s water crisis. As the global average temperature continues to rise, extreme droughts and heat waves, and their associated impacts on water resources and infrastructure, will become increasingly common.

Reliance on dams and reservoirs exacerbates China’s water scarcity problems

These events undermine not only the logic of water diversion projects such as the SNWDP but also China’s overreliance on hydropower and necessary reservoirs. Despite assumptions that reservoirs can address water scarcity problems, in practice, they produce two paradoxical outcomes which reinforce them. The first is that while reservoirs can improve water security in a given area in the short term, they tend to produce a “reservoir effect”: communities and industries address water shortages by expanding reservoirs, leading to unsustainable practices which undermine water security in the long term. These practices not only fail to address underlying issues of consumption and inefficient use of water resources but also reduce preparedness and adaptability in the face of climate change. The second problem is that reservoirs tend to accelerate water evaporation as they have a larger surface than rivers and streams. Compounded with higher global temperatures and more frequent heat waves and droughts, reservoirs are more likely to undermine water resources. With around 98,000 dams and reservoirs — far more than any other country — China is likely to experience these two problems more frequently as a result of climate change.

These issues expose the inherent disconnect between China’s water management and its security policies. Both rely on flawed assumptions that obscure more effective ways of addressing its water scarcity issues. While some officials have sounded the alarm on over-relying on water diversion projects, damns, and reservoirs, peers who contend that these projects are engineered with climate change in mind have drowned out these concerns. As a result, there is a delay between tackling crucial problems of water consumption and pricing as well as efficient transit and usage. This delay will not only affect China’s development but also result in greater social problems due to the lack of adequate availability of water for everyday needs. These effects are likely to have disproportionate effects on China’s underdeveloped interior provinces which ironically are areas where Party officials have sought to promote greater agricultural output as well as industrialisation due to concerns that the development gap between the coast and interior of the country may result in social unrest.

China’s water insecurity will affect its neighbours

These issues do not have purely domestic effects. Given Chinese officials’ growing concerns over water scarcity and the fact that China is upstream of major rivers in Asia, there is a possibility for increased tensions over water flow in the region at the expense of legitimate cooperation and coordination on water sustainability. For example, in 2019, Chinese dams held back so much water in the country’s section of the Mekong River that it prevented an annual monsoon-driven rise downstream, ultimately causing a regional drought. These practices are also having a detrimental effect on regional food security given that the reduced flow of the Mekong River has resulted in the collapse of freshwater fish stocks on which communities along the Mekong River Basin rely as a key source of protein intake. These issues are not restricted to the Mekong; there are growing concerns that these practices will be replicated in the Brahmaputra, which also originates in China and is crucial to India and Bangladesh’s water security.

The sole bright spot in China’s water policy so far has been its cooperation with Kazakhstan on the Irtysh and Ili Rivers. However, much of this is based on China’s reliance on Kazakhstan as a partner in fighting separatism, extremism, and terrorism as well as it being the source and transit of oil and natural gas. As a result, there is little optimism that the positive development in Sino-Kazakh water policy can be easily replicated elsewhere. This produces a heightened sense of insecurity among South and Southeast Asian countries which can inflame existing regional tensions as climate change exacerbates existing water security problems.

Ultimately, Chinese officials’ reliance on water diversion, dams, and reservoirs as the primary mechanism for solving China’s water scarcity problem is based on flawed assumptions. Beijing’s preferred approach has resulted in the neglect of water management efforts that would be more efficient and effective for sustainably tackling the problem. The current approach has resulted in a water policy that has had a detrimental impact on regional water security and social stability, thus heightening tensions in the region. In essence, Beijing’s ‘solution’ to its water security dilemma causes more insecurity, both for itself and its neighbours.

DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.

Author biographies

Zenel Garcia is an Associate Professor of Security Studies in the Department of National Security and Strategy at the U.S. Army War College. His research focuses on the intersection of international relations theory, security, and geopolitics in the Indo-Pacific and Eurasia.

Phillip Guerreiro is a Ph.D. candidate in international relations at the Steven J. Green School of International & Public Affairs at Florida International University. His research focuses on water security and environmental politics in China and Southeast Asia. Image credit: Flickr/Jack Zalium (image cropped).