In the summer of 1954, the Yangtze River flooded. At least 30,000 people were killed in one
of the deadliest disasters of its kind in history. The timing — just five years after the founding
of the People’s Republic of China — embedded in the tragedy an additional layer of meaning. For the superstitious, it was not a cheerful
start to the “Revolutionary Cause”. But rather than let this become a stain on
the new nation, Mao seized the opportunity to assert the party’s resilience and depict
nature as a common enemy to be dominated, overcome, and, ultimately, conquered. Two years after the floods, Mao swam the Yangtze
in a triumph of propaganda. To commemorate this moment, the chairman wrote
a poem in which he dreamed of constructing a “Wall of Stone” across the water so
great it would impress even a mountain goddess. China’s war on water had begun. The practical success of the many dams and
dikes built during the Mao era was mixed, but the political success was unquestionable. Rivers are said to be the lifeblood of a nation,
and the myths surrounding them are ripe for nation-building. The Yellow and Yangtze rivers, in particular,
are of special historical significance. The former, whose taming was arguably the
foundation of early government, is considered the “birthplace of China” and holds over
40% of the country’s farmland. Mao’s preferred design for the new national
flag featured only a single star and horizontal line representing the Yellow river. The Yangtze river, meanwhile, is pictured
on banknotes and is the center of rice production, textiles, and much of the nation’s industry. Control of water has long meant practical
control of food, trade, energy, transportation, and protection against invaders. Daming these ancient waterways was therefore
just as much a testament to China’s strength as it was a means of managing water. Engineering the environment led to the perception
of China — and, more specifically, the party — as a force greater than nature — one
strong, capable, and prudent enough to build something so colossal. It was in this same light that, ten years
after his first swim in the Yangtze, Mao returned to affirm his grip on power. Now 72 years old and facing a flurry of rumors
about his health, he once again used his association with the river to demonstrate vitality. Accompanied by six floating bodyguards, Mao
swam a whole 9 miles according to state propaganda. And in 2003, 47 years later, Mao’s “Wall
of Stone” was realized. Indeed, in the Three Gorges Dam, the mighty
Yangtze was finally conquered. Water spawned Chinese civilization. Control of water gave and later snatched away
power from Imperial dynasties. And the state’s engineering dominance over
water showed the world what it was capable of. It is thus rather poetic that someday very
soon, water will once again play a defining role in China’s future. Rather than suffering from too much water,
as in the floods of decades past, today’s China faces a different kind of challenge:
not enough of it. And it will severely inhibit the country’s
ambitions. In the past 20 years, 28,000 of its rivers
have disappeared — equivalent to the entire basin area of the Mississippi. The flow of the Yellow River is now just 10%
of what it was in the 1940s, making it the most threatened river in all of Asia. The number of dry-ups has increased rapidly. And that’s just the beginning. But don’t just take my word. Take China’s... Its leaders have called the water shortage
a “threat to the survival of the Chinese nation”, announced the need to “fight
for every drop of water or die”, and its own Ministry of Water Resources predicts a
serious water crisis by 2030. Sponsored by Brilliant. Learn math, science, and computer science
intuitively with the link in the description. The problem facing China is not, exactly,
that it lacks water. Make no mistake: China has a lot. Its freshwater resources are the 5th highest
in the world — behind only Brazil, Russia, the U.S., and Canada — two of which have
the unfair advantage of lying in Polar regions. And measured by the length of all navigable
waterways, China is naturally blessed with the number one position — more than twice
all of Europe combined, in fact. The problem slightly peaks its head out when
we adjust for population. Per Capita, China’s freshwater ranking falls
from 5th to 105th — something like 2,000 cubic meters to the world average of 8,000. Still, there are many large and even rich
countries lower down on the list. China’s per capita resources are only modestly
lower than the UK’s, and significantly higher than Germany’s. One of the many reasons China’s water scarcity
receives equally scarce attention is that it’s well hidden in international comparisons. Only when we ask where its water is located,
do we really begin to understand the issue. When it comes to water, China is split in
two, and the Yangtze is an inexact but useful artificial dividing line. To the South, the theme is wet. These subtropical latitudes receive lots and
lots of rain. Average annual rainfall in the region is over
2,000 millimeters, most of which occurs in the summer. It should be no surprise then that the staple
food here is rice, one of the most water-intensive crops. To the north of the Yangtze, think cold and
dry. This is a temperate-to-arid region with only
about 200-400 millimeters of annual rainfall. There’s some rain, but not much. Just barely enough to sustain agriculture,
and noodles are the staple. The problem is not just where but also when
the water is located. Even what little precipitation the North does
receive, it usually comes all at once, making it even less useful than these raw numbers
imply. The same farm might contend with both seasonal
droughts in the crucial Spring months, followed by monsoon floods in July and August. And when one area experiences one, other areas
are likely to simultaneously experience the other. Lack of water increases the concentration
of salt in the soil, and the hot summer months then pull those salts to the surface. Irregular and unpredictable weather makes
planning for these extremes difficult-to-impossible. And to make matters worse, climate change
is aggravating regional differences — making the South even wetter and the North even dryer. This North-South divide is the fundamental
challenge facing China. Lots of water below the Yangtze; not enough
above it. Water, of course, is renewed in a cycle, but
natural laws do not obey the economic laws of supply and demand. The two halves of China share almost equal
portions of GDP, industrial output, and population. Except: the North holds only 20% of its water,
and the South, 80. You might assume that, given this disparity,
agriculture would be mainly concentrated in the South. But not so. 64% of total arable land and some 40% of farmland
is located in the inhospitable and highly temperamental North. Put differently, the amount of freshwater
per unit of farmland in the North China plain is 15% of the country’s average. We think of China as the world’s producer. But the reality is that its ability to feed
even itself is increasingly tenuous at best. And food is only the tip of the (melting)
iceberg. Agriculture may account for the majority of
the national water usage, but the resource it should be most fearful of is energy. It takes 24 bathtubs of water to produce one
tonne of coal, and yet 86% of its coal is produced in the North. It’s true that China is actively reducing
its reliance on coal, but when it comes to water, it doesn’t all that much matter. 97% of its electricity requires water in one
form or another, and neither oil, gas, nuclear, nor hydropower is an effective solution. So while, yes, its reliance is decreasing
over time, it’s just not nearly fast enough. And because household use is so minuscule
in comparison, water scarcity forces a trade-off between energy and food security — neither
of which is palatable. Nowhere is the situation more dire than around
the capital, Beijing, which makes the Northern region as a whole look half serviceable. Recall that China has about 2,000 cubic meters
of freshwater per person, overall. Water stress is generally defined as just
slightly less — 1,700 cubic meters per person. Scarcity starts at around 1,000 cubic meters,
and acute scarcity, around 500. Here are the per capita water resources in
the country’s 10 driest provinces. As of 2016, four were already below half the
level of acute scarcity. The worst areas are in the same extreme category
as Oman, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia. These are Chinese government-supplied figures. The Hai River basin, which includes Beijing,
is especially concerning thanks to the stark contrast between its huge population and scarce
water resources. In 2016, the mayor announced that the city’s
population could not be allowed to grow past 23 million for this very reason. It’s simply not sustainable. So far we haven’t painted a very pretty
picture. But we’ve operated under a foolish assumption. We’ve taken for granted that all water is
good water, which, in China’s case, it most definitely is not. The Chinese water quality system has five
levels: Level one is nearly drinkable,
Two is lightly polluted but treatable, Three can be swam or fished in,
Four can be used only for industry and never in contact with humans,
And finally, level five is good only for one thing: irrigation. Anything worse is essentially useless. Already in 2013, over half of groundwater
around Beijing was level V or worse. Just a quarter of the total could even be
treated for human consumption. These days, the vast majority of groundwater
is level 4 or 5, and nearly one-fifth is worse — meaning useless. Polluted drinking water presents both an economic
and a human cost — disease, cancer, premature death, and immeasurable hardship. Environmental degradation has caused the possible
extinction of the Yangtze river dolphin and desertification has led to Beijing sandstorms
so severe that they turn the sky a kind of dystopian yellow — that is, if you can see
past the normal pollution. Given the absence of surface water in the
North, cities there have over-extracted from underground aquifers, which carries several
consequences. First, draining groundwater so completely
leaves no backup in times of acute stress, like during unusually bad droughts. Second, removing aquifers causes the ground
to collapse, leading to subsidence, which is when buildings, bridges, and other structures
slowly and unevenly sink into the ground. Shanghai, for instance, has sunk by 2 meters
in the last two decades, and, most embarrassingly, sections of The Great Wall are visibly eroding. When the question of where to find water arises,
the inevitable answer is always desalination. Israel, also starved for water, has effectively
solved its problem with six desalination plants, which provide the country with about 80% of
its water. The difference between it and China, however,
is that the former is tiny and rich. It’s estimated that to desalinate and transfer
one cubic meter of saltwater from the coast of China inland would consume another .50-75
cubic meters of water in the process. Desalination is extremely energy intensive,
China’s energy comes mostly from coal, and coal uses lots and lots of water. Can you spot the problem? Well then, you might think, the problem is
really only one of allocation. Water can be moved, so why not even out the
geographic differences? Mao agreed. In 1952, he observed, very matter-of-factly:
“There's a lot of water in the south, but not much in the north. If we could borrow some, then everything would
be OK." It took half a century, but Mao’s suggestions
do not go unanswered. The equally straightforwardly named South-North
Water Transfer Project began operation in 2002. The largest in the world, it consists of 2,700
miles of artificial waterways and canals designed to do one thing: move water North. The Eastern route is a major upgrade to the
ancient Grand Canal, which pumps water from the Yangtze up to Tianjin. The Central route, meanwhile, is also carried
under the Yellow River, but by gravity, and all the way up to Beijing. A third, Western route is planned to connect
tributaries of the Yangtze to the Yellow River, and will be the most technically demanding,
as its path intersects mountains. There’s no doubt that the project — which
spans four major rivers, three megacities, and six provinces — is a true engineering
wonder. One could reasonably argue that only China
has the unique combination of political and economic infrastructure to relocate entire
towns, coordinate between such disparate levels of government, and make the requisite legal
changes at this scale. This is not meant to imply that the project
was uncontroversial. Expected to cost a massive $62 billion, it
already exceeded that number a decade ago, and 345,000 people have been relocated in
the process. Some are happy with their compensation, but
others complain their new life is measurably worse. The first drop of water, meanwhile, reached
Beijing in 2015, 7 years after the 2008 Summer Olympics, the original goal. Now, all of these costs would be one thing
if the project singularly solved China’s water woes. Unfortunately, not even close. Even if it supplied only the Beijing/Tianjin/Hebei
area, these places would still be categorized as acutely scarce. Yet it’s also responsible for three other
provinces. Even at its imagined full capacity, it would
only offset one-fourth of Northern China’s annual demand of 203 billion cubic meters
by 2050, according to the Chinese Institute of Water Resources. In other words, decades of engineering, forced
relocations, and environmental destruction all amount to, essentially, a band-aid. Perhaps worse than a band-aid — which may
not heal wounds but at least doesn’t make them worse. These canals don’t create water out of thin
air, they merely move it — shifting the problem, quite literally, downstream. Southern provinces, worried about their own
supply and quality of water, increasingly rely themselves on water transfer projects
and dams from elsewhere. When the music stops, someone will pay the
price. All of this makes the enormity of the project
sort of ironic. On one hand, it represents an amazing technical
accomplishment. On the other, it represents the extraordinary
lengths China will go only to paint the superficial veneer of progress. The much more obvious solution is to target
not supply but demand. The price of water in China is among the lowest
in the world — less than a third of what it is in the U.S. and just a quarter of the
world average. Because water is so heavily subsidized, farmers
have little reason to make efficient use of it. The most common method of irrigation is flooding,
when farmers aimlessly dump water over their fields until most evaporates or runs off. About half of the water used in this process
is wasted. These inefficiencies are reflected in China’s
low water productivity — which is defined as the crop value generated for every cubic
meter of water used. Various regional governments have dabbled
in market-based reforms, but not nearly as much as one would expect, given how much is
at stake. Price adjustments are not, to be clear, some
magical silver bullet, but they do raise an important question: Why did China spend a
hundred billion dollars building a water conveyor belt from New York to LA, when it could have
just raised prices? Some experts point the curiously high number
of engineers among China’s top ranks — many even specialized in hydraulics. At one point, all of the nine Politburo standing
committee members were engineers. It’s probably true that hydraulic engineers
see everything as a hydraulic engineering problem, and it doesn’t hurt that the country
has historically sought high-profile infrastructure projects as a means of gaining legitimacy. But. There’s another reason — one that has
nothing at all to do with water in particular. The reason China opts for a band-aid to solve
its water crisis is the same reason it waited decades to halt the One Child Policy, long
past when it's disastrous effects were made clear, and the same reason it pays only lip
service to the housing crisis. There’s one thing China fears far, far more
than a demographic, housing, or even water crisis, and it also just so happens to be
the key to understanding it’s aggressive posture — why it seems to pick fights on
the world stage and needlessly harm relations with other countries. Next time, in part four of China’s Reckoning. While I was writing these videos, I remembered
learning in school about population pyramids, water conservancy, and economics. None of it seemed very interesting to me then
and the only difference was how the information was presented. One of my goals for this channel is to inform
and educate, but in a way that you actually enjoy. It’s with that same philosophy that Brilliant
is designed to teach you science, math, and computer science in a way that's immersive
and engaging. You learn with Brilliant not by memorizing
formulas but by doing, and always in service of a clear goal. Lessons are designed more like interactive
games than lectures. Take this one, for instance, in which you
learn science by doing puzzles. Whatever you want to learn — Python, statistics,
Quantum Computing, or physics — Brilliant’s got a course for you, and you can jump between
them whenever and however often you like. Learn something new today by going to brilliant.org/Polymatter
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the annual Premium subscription.
PolyMatter's stuff, especially on China, is so interesting and appears to be well-researched.
Fingers crossed I don't see one of his vids on some reddit post dunking on it because of inaccuracies. The dude puts out tons of high-effort content with amazing presentation.
Prediction: part 4 will talk about China fearing revolts and talks about the drawbacks of autocracy and extractive institutions.
It will be very based.
Egypt vs. Ethiopia could become the next water war if they decide to act on that dam.
Great video but I have to play the 50 cent army here - doesn't the US have the same problem in the west (albeit much smaller in scale)? I mean, why the hell are we growing almonds and rice in California? Single family homes with grass lawns in Nevada and Arizona?
!ping CN-TW
CMV, China is to PolyMatter what airplanes are to Wendover and that's a good thing.
ah, I've been waiting for this video!
!ping FOREIGN-POLICY
My money is on them coercing Russia into selling them water from Siberia. Or grabbing more from India and Southeast Asia.