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Water in China: A Thirsty Country

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Introduction

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China faces severe water shortages. Its current water per capita is one quarter of the world average, yet its overall per capita usage is still low by international standards, but this will increase over the coming decades. The water that China does have is often badly polluted and is inefficiently used. Moreover, China’s water is unequally distributed with the Yangtze River basin and areas to the south enjoying 84% of China’s naturally available water compared with just 16% in China’s north.

China’s water scarcity will challenge its future economic expansion. Already, agriculture, industry and China’s growing cities all compete for scarce water resources, as do China’s different regions. Decades-old economic priorities such as food self-sufficiency will be increasingly difficult to maintain because water used in industrial output creates more economic value than it does in agriculture. Water scarcity also creates domestic unrest. Increasing illness caused by polluted water is driving up healthcare costs and generating more internal dissent. In 2009, the Chinese government acknowledged that 90,000 “mass incidents” (a euphemism for protests) occurred, many of which were sparked by environmental and water degradation.

Population and its Impact on the Hydrological Cycle

Right from China’s earliest dynasties great attention was paid to agricultural productivity. The Chinese bureaucracy mobilized the Chinese masses to construct irrigation systems and to clear land. This created an agriculture-population feedback loop. Increased agricultural productivity led to a rise in population, requiring further hydro-engineering and agricultural innovation to maintain China’s swelling numbers. In an agrarian society, large families of many sons offered rural parents security both in terms of providing labor for farming and care in old age. In this way, China has remained the world’s most populous country for thousands of years. China is still the world’s most populous country today. In 2019, China’s population was approximately 1.434 billion people. By 2035, China’s population is expected to peak at 1.461 billion people. By 2050 and 2100, China’s population will reduce to 1.402 billion and 1.064 billion, respectively.

 

China’s large population today has risen in part because of a significant population surge between 1950 and 1980. During the period, China’s population grew from 554 million to just over 1 billion people. In order to feed its enormous and rapidly growing population, Mao mobilized its masses to create new agricultural and grazing land through the clearing of forests, the filling of lakes, the draining of swamps and wetlands, and the creation of large irrigation projects. While placing more agricultural land under plow and significantly expanding its irrigation networks, this significant transformation of China’s natural environment into an agricultural environment has impacted China’s hydrological cycle. When land is cleared of plant life through unsustainable farming and grazing methods, the local hydrological cycle is disrupted, and desiccation – the drying out of the environment – occurs. Instead of catching precipitation in the region and allowing rain to repeatedly return to the area hrough the process of evapotranspiration, deforestation, over-grazing and over-farming causes surface water to run immediately into streams instead of permeating the soil. In the north and northwest of China, it has been estimated that the average annual precipitation has decreased by one third between the 1950s and the 1980s; overall China has 350 billion m³ less water than it had at the start of the century equivalent to the amount of water that flows through the mouth of the Mississippi River in nine months.

China’s Significant Desertification

Approximately 28%, around 2.5 million km², of China’s land is desert or suffering desertification. China’s deserts have expanded significantly over the last six decades. China’s Environmental Protection Agency reported, for instance, that the Gobi Desert grew by 52,400 square kilometers (20,240 square miles) from 1994 to 1999. Overall, China’s semi-arid regions have increased 33% during 1994–2008 compared to 1948–62, and its deserts continue to expand at an estimated rate of 1,300 square miles a year. In addition to topographical and geographical conditions, factors driving China’s desertification include over-cultivation, overgrazing, pollution, wind erosion, water erosion, salinization of soils through over-irrigation, over-cutting firewood, water misuse, and industry and mining-related land destruction.

The cost of desertification is real. It is estimated that China loses approximately $6.8 billion annually from its growing deserts and arid lands. Desertification leads to depreciated land values, food insecurity resulting from reduced crop yields, heightened healthcare issues, and increased costs resulting from land protection efforts. Desertification and deforestation have also caused sediment levels to significantly increase in all of China’s river systems due to severe soil erosion. Greater soil levels in river water can impact the functioning of China’s many hydropower systems.

To fight China’s desertification, China unveiled the Great Green Wall program.  Launched in 1978 and targeted to continue until 2050, the program’s objective is to plant a shelterbelt of trees across the northwest rim of China skirting the Gobi Desert. The Great Green Wall is expected to be 4,480 km long and 560-1460 km wide. To date, an estimated 66 billion trees have been planted.

However, this massive reforestation program has been controversial. Much of the shelterbelt area, except for areas to the east, is not highly suitable to forest growth. Trying to plant trees in ecosystems not suited to forest can diminish biodiversity, reduce water recharge, and cause a loss of soil quality and moisture. Additionally, China has tended toward the planting of a single species of trees over large areas. In Ningxia, for example, 70% of the trees planted were poplar and willow. Monocultures tend to be more vulnerable to disease.  In 2000, for instance, one billion poplar trees were lost to disease, wiping out 20 years of planting effort. Additionally, monocultures do not increase biodiversity as they are not appropriate either for plants and animals normally found in the native, dry-land ecosystems or for the animals and plants that might want to migrate to newly forested ecosystems.

Another disadvantage of planting trees on grasslands is that they tend to absorb large amounts of groundwater. In Minqin, an area in north-western China, studies have shown that groundwater levels dropped by 12–19 metres since the advent of the project. As these trees absorb water levels, shallower-rooting native shrubs and grasses can die off. When this occurs, the soil on the forest floor is susceptible to wind erosion, the very challenge that the trees were planted to thwart.  As evidence of this risk, sand storms from wind erosion have become more frequent despite China’s herculean tree-planting efforts. Fifty years ago, dust storms plagued China about once every seven or eight years; now they occur annually.

Given the challenges of the Great Green Wall, there is growing realization shrubs and grasses native to the region may be much more effective in restoring degraded dry lands and holding sand in place. As a result, there has been some movement toward replacing the planting of trees with the sowing of native flora.

Water Scarcity

Overall, China is an extremely arid country.  As China’s population has swelled over the millennia, its per capita water has decreased. China now has an estimated 2,029 m3 of water per capita per annum, one quarter the world’s average. This per capita water figure is projected to decrease to 1,875 m³ by 2033. This water scarcity is exacerbated by China’s uneven water distribution. China’s precipitation patterns are heavily affected by the East Asian monsoonal climate. Its mountainous geography impedes and drains the monsoonal rains as they move from the southeast into the northwest of the continent. On average, southern China – including the Yangtze River basin and areas to its south – has approximately 80% of China’s water, yet the area supports 54% of its population, 35% of its arable land, and 55% of its GDP Conversely, northern China collected only 20% of China’s water to maintain 46% of the population, 65% of the arable land and 45% of its GDP. In some northern areas, strains on water resources are even worse. Beijing’s and Tianjin’s Hai River basin, for instance, receives approximately 1.5% of China’s water to support 10% of its population and 11% of its arable land. Moreover, 47% of total industrial output is fabricated in China driest 11 provinces including: Beijing, Gansu, Hebei, Henan, Jiangsu, Liaoning, Ningxia and Shandong. These 11 water-parched provinces account for just 7% of China’s total water resources but produce 36% of China’s agricultural production and 43% of total GDP while supporting 38% of the population.

Approximately 400 of China’s cities currently face water shortages, and over 300 million people drink water contaminated with pollutants including arsenic, excessive fluoride, toxins from untreated factory wastewater, agricultural chemicals, leaching landfill waste and human sewage. Moreover, China’s per capita water footprint is growing. China will not only have more people competing for its finite water resources in the coming decades, but each person will individually demand more water. Today, China’s overall water footprint per capita is still about half that of the US but is expected to grow by between 40% and 50% by 2030. Factors such as higher living standards, increasing urbanization and further industrialization are driving water demand. China’s rising wealth has meant, for instance, that its citizens are eating substantially more meat. The production of one kilogram of beef requires 600 liters of water compared with the 100 liters required for a kilogram of wheat. This shift in diet can be seen in China’s food footprint numbers. In 1961, China used 260 m³ of water per capita to grow food; by 2003 this figure had more than trebled to 860 m³.

Agricultural, Urbanization, Industrialization, Water Wastage

Currently, 62% of China’s water is used for agriculture, a sector which is responsible for approximately 13% of the country’s GDP. About 50% of China’s farmland requires irrigation, more than double the world average. Nearly 75% of total grain production and over 90% of China’s cash crops are sown on irrigated farms. According to China Water Risk, irrigation water usage was approximately 340 billion m3 in 2013, equal to the average annual flow from China’s Pearl River, China’s third longest river.  Yet agriculture water usage remains extremely inefficient, with an estimated 45% of agricultural water lost before it even reaches crops.  By contrast, water used for industrial output is 70 times more productive in terms of financial value than that used in wheat production.

That said, the water productivity of Chinese industry is also low by international standards. The industrial added value per 10,000 yuan of water consumption is about 50 m³ compared to 7-9 m³ in developed countries. Additionally, the industrial water recycling rate is less than 50% compared to 85% in developed countries. Overall, China’s overall water productivity – calculated by dividing GDP by annual total water withdrawal – remains low: $15 in 2015 compared with $318 for the UK, $115 for Singapore, $103 for Germany, $67 for Japan, and $36 for the United States.

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China’s growing urbanization is also requiring more water per capita. 70% of Chinese citizens are projected to be living in cities by 2030, up from 59% today. This is significant because urban dwellers consume three times as much water and energy as rural residents. Between 2000 and 2020, for instance, the World Bank estimated that China’s urban water consumption increased by 60% as its urbanization rate rose from 36% in 2000 to 57% in 2020. Moreover, more urban dwellers will require more electricity. Currently, it is estimated that 59% of China’s primary energy consumed was powered by coal.  Coal requires more water to produce them all other energy sources. Moreover, over half of China’s coal deposits are found in its north, the Chinese region which suffers from the most water scarcity.  Coal mining, processing, combustion, and coal-to-chemical industries are the country’s second largest water consumer after agriculture. Therefore, consuming more coal to produce more electricity will put additional stress China’s limited water resources. Finally, China’s urban water distribution networks are particularly leaky. In 2002, an investigation of 408 cities conducted by the Ministry of Construction found that urban water supplies lost an average of 22% of their total water flow.

Water Pollution

Despite China’s efforts over the last three decades, water pollution has spread from the coastal to inland areas and from the surface to underground water resources. An estimated 70% of China’s rivers and lakes are now polluted. In 2009, 57% of the 7 monitored river basins had pollution levels of I-III, suitable for drinking, swimming, household use, and able to support aquatic life. 24% of China’s rivers had levels of IV-V, water unfit for swimming, but suitable for industrial purpose. 19% had V+, meaning that the water is considered useless, unfit for industry or agriculture and unsafe for human contact even after treatment. 23% of China’s key lakes and reservoirs had water grades of I-III, 42% IV-V and 35% V+. 2.3% of groundwater in 8 regions was rated I-II, 23.9% was graded III, and 73.8% ranked IV-V.

Causes of water pollution include the disposal of industrial chemicals and waste, agricultural waste, and residential wastewater. Of these pollution sources, approximately 70% of the water pollution nationwide comes from agriculture, particularly runoff from fertilizers, pesticides, and animal waste. For millennia, China’s farmers produced agriculture through “organic” farming methods. Farmers collected every bit of organic waste to ferment for fertilizer. Nothing was wasted, and even human waste, or “night soil”, went into “honey buckets” to transport to the fields. Every winter and spring farmers dredged nearby rivers and canals to add sediment to the fertilizer. Particularly in the south, dense grass at the water’s edge was added to pig fodder, which, after being digested by the pigs, produced manure, and helped keep the rivers and lakes clear from vegetation. The entire process of recycling was labor-intensive but efficient. The rivers and lakes remained relatively clean despite thousands of years of intensive farming.

Yet, since 1978, fertilizer applications in China have increased fivefold. In general, animal and human feces are no longer collected for fertilizer, and instead are discharged untreated into rivers.

In addition to causing pollution, fertilizer runoff is also raising the instances of eutrophication. Although blooms of aquatic biomass are spurred by a variety of factors including nutrients, light, temperature, water flow, turbidity, zooplankton grazing and toxic substances, the main factor contributing to the growth of algae is the supply of nutrients.  Chemical fertilizer runoff has significantly accelerated eutrophication of many of China’s lakes such as Dian Chi in Yunnan Province, Chao Hu in Anhui Province and Tai Hu in Hubei Province where algae blooms absorb a significant portion of the lake’s oxygen, choking off fish and other aquatic life. Large algae blooms also broke out right before the 2008 Olympics, forcing Beijing to launch a massive emergency clean-up to ensure the sailing events could go ahead as scheduled in Qingdao, in Shandong.

In addition to pollution caused from fertilizer and pesticide runoff, rural areas also contribute to contamination by poor wastewater management. According to the 2017 China Statistical Yearbook, for instance, while nearly 95% of municipal wastewater generated by urban residents was treated, this number dropped to 25% for rural residents. Additionally, small-scale rural enterprises have less rigorous environmental monitoring, but frequently engage in all manner of heavily polluting production, such as the operation of paper mills, tanneries, and breweries. Pollution from the small-scale rural enterprises is aggravated by the fact that they are more likely to use outdated equipment and have less resources to spend on pollution abatement.

About 80% of China’s 7500 most polluting factories are located on rivers, lakes, or in heavily populated areas. While occurring less frequently than in the past, these factories have been known to release untreated waste and chemicals into China’s waters either intentionally or by accident. Example of this is the 2012 cadmium spill in Guangxi which polluted an approximately 100 km stretch of the Longjiang River at a level of more than five times the official limit, contaminating water supplies for Liuzhou, a city of 3.2 million people. Cadmium is poisonous and can cause cancer. Another example is the 2020 Heilongjiang province spillage of 2.53 million cubic meters of water containing molybdenum ore waste into the local river system. The spill contaminated water for 110 km southwest of the mining site, where the chemical oxygen demand reading (DOC) – a measure of water quality – was 5.7 times higher than standard levels.

China’s factories also release dangerous airborne pollutants that are absorbed into groundwater or contaminate rivers by way of urban runoff. Some of the most harmful are categorized as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), and an estimated 90% of water located in sources near Chinese cities is now dangerously polluted because of their presence.

Economic and Health Cost of Water Pollution

pcruciatti / Shutterstock.com The World Bank estimated that China’s water crisis is reducing China’s GDP by approximately 2.3% annually, with 1.3% attributable to water scarcity, and the other 1% caused by the cost of water pollution  estimates do not include the costs of ecological deterioration caused from the eutrophication of lakes and rivers. Nor do they reflect the economic cost of disease caused by water pollution, conservatively estimated at an additional 0.5% of GDP. In China’s most polluted areas, water has also been blamed for the recent high rates of various health abnormalities including liver and stomach cancer, stunted growth, miscarriages, and birth defects. This pollution can also be absorbed through China’s food supply. In 2011, it was estimated that up to 10% of China’s rice crop might contain unsafe or nearly unsafe levels of cadmium because of widespread irrigation with cadmium-poisoned water. A more targeted 2014 Greenpeace study testing rice harvested in Hunan province near a smelting site found that the rice contained dangerously high levels of cadmium, lead and arsenic.

China has also seen a rise in cancer rates. Contemporaneously with the rise in pollution levels in China’s lakes and rivers, digestive tract cancers including stomach, liver and esophagus have also risen and are now responsible for approximately 36.4% of cancer-related deaths in China compared to less than 5% of total cancer deaths in either the US or the UK. Additionally, there have also been incidents of contaminated river water from industrial activities leading to outbreaks of cancer concentrated in some villages. These villages have become colloquially known as Aizheng Cun, which literally translates as “Cancer Village.”

Flooding – Yellow River and Yangtze River

Not only are desertification and deforestation exacerbating China’s water scarcity, they are also aggravating China’s flooding challenges. The Chinese Minister of Water Resources, Chen Lei estimated in 2007 that China has lost 2% of national GDP annually to flooding since 1990 and a recent study placed the total costs of floods from 2000 to 2012 at 105 billion RMB annually (US $17 billion). Flooding has challenged Chinese rulers for millennia. From 602 BCE to 1938 AD it is estimated that major collapses of Yellow River dikes occurred once every two or three years. Then, every hundred years or so, the river would change its course. Many of the resulting floods were some of the deadliest natural disasters ever recorded. For millennia, the Chinese constructed dikes along the lower reaches of the Yellow River trying to contain its torrents, yet constant ecological destruction along the upper reaches increased erosion which intensified river silting. The silting raised the riverbed above the countryside. This “suspended” river greatly increased flood damage when the river inevitably breached its dikes. After 1949, the CCP built almost 3000 dams on the Yellow River, and heavily reinforced its levees and embankments. These hydro-engineering projects involved the equivalent of 500 million workdays and 1.4 billion m³ of reinforced concrete – enough to build 13 Great Walls. Yet many of the Yellow River’s dams have fallen short of physical and economic targets, and have resulted in huge losses of forest lands, wildlife habitat and aquatic biodiversity. Global warming has also increased evaporation at many of the dam sites.

Similarly, parts of the Yangtze River have flooded continually for millennia. Yet, as deforestation and reclamation of land has increased, floods have become more frequent and more destructive. The CCP attempted to solve the flooding by increasing the height of 3,600 km of embankments and more than 30,000 km of levies. The work required more than 4 billion m³ of dirt and stone, or enough material to put a wall around the globe three times. Yet these raised structures could not offset the loss of water absorption capacity caused by the rapid deforestation and agricultural land reclamation that occurred during the same period. As a result, the Yangtze experienced a series of significant floods in 1980, 1981, 1983, 1991 and 1996. Then in June 1998, China suffered one of its worst floods in 40 years, leaving 3,700 people dead, 15 million homeless and causing $26 billion of economic damages. The reinforced embankments and levees proved largely ineffective, with approximately 9,000 of them collapsing. As well as providing hydropower and improved navigation, the controversial Three Gorges Dam was built in large part to control the Yangtze’s flooding, although many scientists believe that the Yangtze is still vulnerable. Additionally, after the 1998 flood, China began to place greater importance on the role of ecology in flood prevention and has begun an extensive campaign of reforestation and forest preservation.

Drought

Because of the variability of the monsoonal rains and other factors, like flooding, drought has plagued the country for millennia. Yet desiccation, reduced precipitation and rising temperatures in many areas have made China’s droughts more frequent with longer durations extending over greater areas than at any previous time. For instance, research has shown that since 1980, severe droughts in China’s northeast have increased in frequency, severity, and duration. Between 1960 and 1980, acute droughts struck approximately once a decade. From 1980 onwards, droughts have occurred with greater frequency: in 1981, 1986, 1992, 1994, 1997, 2000, 2001, 2005-2007, 2010, 2017-2018, 2019, 2020. China’s southwest to northeast belt was the area most affected by drought. Regions most impacted include Inner Mongolia, Hunan, Yunnan, Hubei, Jilin, Anhui, Sichuan, Liaoning, Guizhou, and Shandong.

Although difficult to pinpoint specifically, it is estimated that China lost $7 billion annually due to the economic cost of drought between 1984 in 2017. If global warming continues apace, these economic losses could increase to between $47 billion annually if temperatures rise an additional 1.5°C to $84 billion if global warming drives temperatures above 2°C.  China has been essentially self-sufficient in grain for decades. This self-sufficiency camouflages the fact that China produces one-sixth of the world’s wheat output and one-fifth of global corn. China is thus enormously important to the world’s food supply. If drought significantly disrupted China’s food production on a large-scale, it could significantly impact world food prices. The risk is real. In every year since 2005, drought has challenged China’s grain crops, and the government has been forced to spend billions of dollars digging wells and cloud seeding to encourage rain. In 2010-201, northern China suffered its worst drought in 60 years, impacting most of China’s wheat producing regions. At its peak, it is estimated that 36% of China’s northern wheat fields were affected, and that 2.57 million people and 2.79 million livestock suffered from a lack of water. The water shortages also affected around 161 million people, with an economic cost estimated at $2.8 billion. In 2017, China’s Inner Mongolia region experienced a severe drought which affected 120,000 people and 500,000 livestock and 16 million acres of pastureland. It is estimated that the drought caused economic losses of approximately $780 million. In 2019, China’s Hebei province experienced a serious drought which impacted almost 800,000 ha of cropland and left 15,700 people and ,3000 domestic animals with diminished access to drinking water.

Drought has not been restricted to China’s drier north. In western Sichuan, for example, rapid deforestation caused Sichuan’s forest cover to fall from 3.6 million hectares in in 1985 to 2.34 million hectares in 1995 which has led to decreased precipitation. In the 1950s, serious droughts hit Sichuan about once every three years. In the 1960s, this became once every two years and by the 1980s, drought troubled Sichuan counties annually. In 2010, more than 20 million people in Yunnan, Guangxi, Guizhou, Sichuan, and Chongqing were left without adequate drinking water and a 2011 Sichuan drought affected almost 8 million people. Looking at drought conditions in Guangxi province specifically, records show that from 1618 to 1943, major droughts hit the region once every 33 years. From 1946 to 1972, the interval fell to every six years, and in the 1980s, it fell to every two years. There were four major droughts in the three-year period from 1989 to 1991. Since 2000, drought has plagued Guangxi annually. In 2004, for instance, 1100 Guangxi reservoirs went dry, and hydropower generation was cut dramatically. In 2007, one million residents in Guangxi and 250,000 in neighboring Guangdong faced water shortages during the worst regional drought in more than 50 years. In 2009, Guangxi, which produces 60% of China’s sugar cane, had a 10% drop in its production due to drought conditions. In 2010, 12 of the 14 cities in Guangxi were affected by water shortages. As another example, in 2019, Anhui Province, was plagued by the worst drought it had experienced in 50 years. Rainfall was at only 40% of normal levels. The neighboring provinces of Hubei, Jiangsu, Jiangxi and Zhejian were also significantly impacted.

Climate Change

How climate change will impact China’s water scarcity is still being studied. A study published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences estimated that drought related losses caused China approximately $7 billion annually between 1984 in 2017. If temperatures were to rise 1.5°C, these losses could grow to $47 billion annually. Above 2°C, drought losses could rise as high as $84 billion annually. Overall, however, a clear understanding of the impact of climate change on China’s water resources and agriculture is not definitive. Most scientists agree that more work is needed on regional climate simulations-especially simulations of precipitation-to better understand how a warming environment will impact everything from crops to diseases to future per capita water resources. (Piao, 2010)

What is definitive is that global warming is having an undeniable effect on the Tibetan Plateau. Like the Arctic and Antarctic, the Tibetan plateau is warming three times faster than the global average at .3°C per decade. In Tibet’s case, this accelerated warming is driven significantly by its Tibet’s high elevation which averages 4,500 meters. The plateau holds the largest amount of snow and ice after the Arctic and Antarctic, an estimated 14.5% of the global total including 46,000 glaciers. The plateau is also the source of 10 of the world’s largest rivers including the Yangtze, Yellow, Ganges, Brahmaputra, Mekong, and Indus Rivers which in turn provide water to over 1.6 billion people.  An estimated 80% of Tibet’s glaciers are now melting more quickly than originally thought. Many Chinese scientists believe that one-third of the glacial area in Tibet will disappear by 2050, and half will disappear by 2100.

Greater melting rates will have several effects. Melting glaciers often create glacial lakes dammed by unstable moraines. These moraine dams can unexpectedly burst, causing catastrophic flooding. Greater glacial melt water in the short term will increase river runoff. In the long term, as glaciers diminish or disappear, the resulting depletion of meltwater runoff is likely to deplete the year-round viability of Tibetan originating rivers, threatening the lives and livelihoods of billions of people downstream.

Power Outages

China’s water scarcity has also resulted in lower water levels of many of China’s major river systems. For instance, Chinese researchers have discovered that the volume of water entering the Yangtze River at its source on the Tibetan plateau has dropped by 15% over the last four decades. Similarly, a study regarding Yellow River water found that runoff has runoff decreased significantly between 1956 and 2009. Moreover, a 2013 study conducted by China’s Ministry of Water not only corroborated that the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers are experiencing declining water levels, but also found that approximately 28,000 of China’s original 50,000 rivers have now disappeared.   Part of the reason  for the disappearing rivers has been attributed to improved mapping techniques; however, the fact that rivers are disappearing has been validated by other studies. Other rivers, especially in the north, have become seasonal rivers flowing most strongly during the spring melts.

Diminishing flow levels in China’s rivers mean that the country will be challenged by power outages due to inadequate flow through its hydropower dams. Hydropower accounts for approximately 22% of China’s total installed capacity. It is estimated that the lack of water to run hydropower dams has cut hydroelectric power production by 20% and China may be forced to burn 1 million more metric tons of coal a week to cover the shortfall.

Trends

Serious water scarcity looms in China’s future. This scarcity is likely to increase competition between Chinese regions, between sectors of the economy and between urban and rural residents. It will also raise tensions between the government and parts of society that lack access to adequate, clean water sources. Moreover, the Tibetan Plateau is a source of rivers that reach 16 downstream countries including Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Burma, Bhutan, Nepal, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam. China’s damming, polluting, and use of international rivers is likely to increase tensions with these countries as populations in downstream riparian countries grow, and as  these economies continue to develop  and urbanize. Many of these countries, especially India, are already facing their own severe water crisis, which will only be exacerbated if China diverts river water that needs to be shared internationally.

Additionally, China’s water contamination risks exporting China’s pollution and water-borne disease to its neighbors downstream. This water pollution is exacerbated by rapid glacial melting. Glaciers capture atmospheric pollution; dangerous pesticides such as DDT and pollutants such as perfluoroalkyl acids are increasingly coursing downstream in meltwater and collecting in sediments and in the food chain.

Political relations could be further stressed if water shortages cause mass migrations of people. In fact, some analysts suggest that the so-called “oil wars” of the 20th century could be replaced by “water wars” in the 21st. Over the last 30 years, China’s Mekong dams, alone, have held back more water than they have released. There is some argument that, in anticipation of the fact that Tibet’s glaciers will likely be rapidly depleted in the next 80 years, China is compounding glacier melt for its future needs.

China’s immediate water solution is to use water more conservatively, and to improve pollution control. Historically, China has solved growing water demands through the construction of massive hydro-engineering projects such as the Three Gorges Dam and the South-North Water Diversion Project. In the future, China will increasingly need to solve its water deficit through ecological conservation, pollution management, more efficient water usage, and a redistribution of economic output by raising the price of water to reflect its scarcity and true economic value.

References

Agriculture and Food Security: A Long-Term Priority

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Introduction

Throughout China’s thousands of years of history, famines have often led to rebellions and instability which in turn has led to many a dynasties downfall. Therefore, ensuring food security in China has been both a priority for Chinese leaders throughout the ages, and it remains a priority for the Chinese Communist Party today. China’s challenge is that it supports approximately 19% of the world’s population on approximately 9% of the world’s arable land and 7% of the world’s fresh water. Despite these constraints, China has met its food needs through a policy of agricultural self-sufficiency. Today, China is the world’s leading producer of rice, wheat, and soybeans, the world’s second largest producer of corn and the seventh largest producer of sorghum. Additionally, China is the world’s largest producer of pork, the third largest producer of chicken and the 10th largest producer of beef.

That said, China’s ability to maintain continued growth in agricultural output is under threat unless there is further reform in the agricultural sector. Increased urbanization, plateauing yields, water shortages, small farm sizes and uncertain property laws are all making it difficult for China to continue to increase agricultural production. China’s 13th Five Year Plan (2016-2020) recognizes these challenges. Investing in hybrid seed research, repairing and improving on irrigation infrastructure, reclaiming rural land that has been lost to environmental degradation, shoring food safety mechanisms, expanding agricultural mechanization, and increasing the use of agricultural technology in order to improve yields have all been stated as clear priorities. The plan also recognizes the continued need to invest in rural areas of the country, so that China’s remaining farmers can earn a reasonable living and adequately invest in their children’s future within and beyond the farm sector.

In addition to investing domestically, China is significantly increasing its investment in agriculture abroad. According to a United States Department of Agriculture 2018 report, “1,300 Chinese enterprises had overseas investments in agriculture, forestry, and fisheries valued at $26 billion in 2016. The investments include crop and livestock farming, fishing, processing, farm machinery, inputs, seeds, and logistics in over 100 countries.” These investments have primarily been focused in the regions of Southeast Asia, Russia’s Far East, Ukraine, Africa, Australia, and New Zealand.

China’s Agriculture under Mao Zedong

Paddy Field Plougher near Inle Lake Myanmar (Burma)

When the PRC was founded in 1949 its new leaders continued to support a policy of agricultural self-reliance. This agricultural policy was driven by Mao Zedong’s view that the post-World War II order, with its corresponding American ascendancy, was potentially aggressive and imperialistic. Under this view dependency on grain imports risked making China vulnerable to having its food needs being turned into a weapon against it. In addition, Mao wished to use his country’s limited foreign exchange resources to purchase industrial plant and equipment rather than food, aiming for rapid industrialization. Indeed, until the famine caused by the Great Leap Forward (1958-1961), China exported grain to the Soviet Union in order to purchase plant and heavy equipment, at the expense of providing adequate per capita calories for its citizens at home.

Agriculture thus became the basis on which China’s planned economy was built. As China transitioned to a planned economy, the Communist planners began to underprice farm products relative to heavy industrial goods. This was because the planners were trying to ensure that the industrial sector produced high profits which could be plowed back into industry. To keep industrial profits high, costs had to be kept low; the most easily affected cost was labor. In order keep wages low, food needed to be cheap. Thus, farming became the key to the success of the entire Chinese planned economy. To achieve China’s goals, soon after he took power in 1949, Mao orchestrated the largest act of expropriation in world history. Approximately 200 million acres of land were taken from wealthy landowners and redistributed to nearly every peasant family in China. An estimated two million landlords lost their estates, sometimes through violence and almost never with compensation. Mao soon undercut this mass creation of private land ownership by implementing socialist policies of collective agriculture. The launch of the First Five Year Plan in 1953 saw farmers organized into cooperatives where they pooled their land and shared the proceeds. Under the collective structure, each farmer kept title to his land and was paid both labor wages and a dividend based on the value of the land contributed to the collective. After some success under the cooperative model, Mao went further. In 1958, Mao began to move farmers into communes to gain greater control of agricultural output. Mao believed that communes would generate greater farm output as it allowed an increased usage of irrigation and mechanization. As an added benefit, the surplus farm labor that would theoretically be created by collectivization could then be redeployed into the rural and urban industrial sectors. He also believed that healthcare and education for the rural citizens could be more easily delivered in a collectivized environment. Just as importantly, communes would be an effective platform for mass political indoctrination. Mao’s communes pursued a “grain first policy” in which basic crops such as rice, wheat, and corn were planted regardless of the suitability of the soil and other conditions. The shift to communes eliminated household farming, except on small family plots, and all land ownership transferred to the state.

As a result of Mao’s policies, from 1952 to 1978, China increased industrial production as a percentage of national income from 19.5% to 49.4%. Grain production rose by 86%, an average annual increase of 2.5%. However, grain production increased at a rate about equal to him population growth, meaning that average grain output per capita stayed roughly steady during this period. China also increased the production of cash crops by 16%. Up until 1960, China exported grain, peaking at 5 million tons in 1958. After the famine of the Great Leap Forward, China began to import grain, yet these imports averaged 1.6% of total consumption, meaning that China was almost completely self-sufficient in food under the planned economy.

These statistics, however, are deceptive. Much of Mao’s industrial development was inefficient. Poor economies of scale, inadequate transport, and poorly skilled labor meant that China’s huge industrial investment generally failed to effectively build upon China’s existing industrial base, although its development of human capital skills and rudimentary infrastructure did lay the foundations for broader industrialization during the Reform Era. Throughout the socialist period, Chinese consumers remained on strictly rationed diets consisting primarily of coarse grains. Most consumers were deprived of daily access to cooking oil, sugar, meat, and vegetables for extended periods. In the 1970s, despite increases in grain production, urban residents ate an average of 2,328 calories per day, while rural intake was even lower at 2,100 calories daily. Average grain output per capita remained virtually unchanged and the absolute poverty rate hovered between 30% and 40%.

The primary weakness of communes was the absence of incentives. Farmers did not keep produce from their lands, which undermined their work effort. Instead, commune members were given work points based on tasks; these points were converted to grain and cash pay-outs at the end of each crop year. Free riding and an inability to monitor agricultural labor became endemic. Output also suffered because decision-making was concentrated in the hands of collective leaders who themselves were frequently following dictates from above, stifling any prospect for innovation. The pricing during this era also did little to encourage the efficient production or allocation of goods and services. Additionally, agricultural inputs such as fertilizer were in constant short supply. Because of the hukou housing registration system (which, while more relaxed, remains in force today), farm labor had no opportunity to move from agriculture to industry as the hukou system completely restricted the mobility of China’s people. This entrapment of Chinese villagers in rural areas effectively designated them as second-class citizens.

Agriculture during the Reform Era

After 1978, a series of reforms was introduced into the rural sector to improve its economic performance. One step was to de-collectivize Chinese farmers into what was termed the Household Responsibility System, where the government leased agricultural land to households. The government then raised the prices that farmers would receive by 41% for grain and by around 50% for cash crops for any farm output farmers produced above mandatory quota deliveries. Initially, the state purchased all grain sold by farmers above quotas. Eventually, private agricultural markets were re-established. Greater freedom of choice was allowed in terms of the types of crops cultivated. Fertilizer and new high-yield seed usage became more widespread. The result was a surge in agricultural output. Grain output swelled from 304.8 million tons in 1978 to an estimated 650 million tons in 2018.This growth reflected a significant rise in crop yields as grain sown area has increased at a smaller rate than crop yields. In 1978, China had approximately 120.6 million hectares under plow; in 2017, this figure increased to approximately 135 million hectares. Overall, it is China’s stated goal to maintain cultivated land at around 124 million hectares. Rising crop yields have resulted in grain price reductions. Since 1978, maize prices decreased 33% and wheat 45%. Coupled with rising incomes, these decreases meant that grain, as a percentage of rural and urban household consumption, fell from 40% and 20% respectively in the late 1970s to about 14% and 3% in 2004. These higher yields and lower prices have resulted in more food per capita. Per capita caloric intake rose from 2328 calories per day in 1980 to an excess of 3,000 calories per capita per day by 2008.

Additionally, since 1978, China’s agricultural output became significantly more diversified. Chinese farmers have moved into labor-intensive cash crops such as aquaculture, cotton, edible oils, fruits, and vegetables. Between 1978 and 2007, for instance, crop farming went from 80% of agricultural gross value output to 50.4%, while animal husbandry and fisheries increased from 16.6% to 42.1%. Between 1990 and 2004, China’s vegetable output expanded so quickly that China added the equivalent of California’s vegetable industry every two years in, and orchards now cover over 5% of China’s farmed area, double the share of any other major agricultural nation. As a result of this diversification, the Chinese diet has come more varied. Most Chinese households consume a more varied diet adding meat, poultry, fish, eggs, a variety of vegetables and dairy produce to their diets.

Maintaining Grain Yields – Water and Pollution Challenges

Throughout this period of reform, China maintained its policy of grain independence, never importing more than 5% of its grain needs. As stated in China’s 13th Five Year ensuring basic self-sufficiency of grain and absolute security of stable food remains a clearly stated goal. That said, with 19% of the world’s population being supported by approximately 9% of its arable land, this goal remains challenging. This means that China does not have a comparative advantage in land intensive products such as grain. Moreover, China’s population will continue to rise until around 2035, meaning that China will need to increase yields in order to maintain current grain per capita levels. Furthermore, as China continues to urbanize, more of its usable land will be refashioned into cities and supporting infrastructure. Additionally, pollution, soil erosion and desertification continue to negatively impact the agricultural land that is available. As a result, it is estimated that by 2050, the total demand for arable land will outstrip supply by more than 12%.

Part of the reason that China achieved such high grain production over the last two decades was yield improvements driven by the use of new high-grade seed varieties and by massive inputs of chemical fertilizer. Yet further benefits from these inputs are beginning to diminish. In 1975, total fertilizer usage was 5.5 million tons, but this rose to 47.7 million tons by 2005. China’s per hectare fertilizer usage was second only to Japan in the 1990s. Overall, it is estimated that China uses 30% of the world’s fertilizers and pesticides on 10% of global farmland. Fertilizer saturation is such that previously good or excellent soils are cresting, hardening and becoming devoid of organic material such that further application of fertilizers is leading to diminishing crop yields as well as causing considerable environmental problems such as eutrophication and particle pollution in the air. Yield benefits from the extensive use of plastic are also plateauing. Finally, large-scale deforestation has led to soil erosion.

Water shortages and water pollution may also limit future yields unless China is able to implement significant reforms in its water management. China’s freshwater of approximately 2156 m³ per capita is less than one third of the world average. This is projected to decrease to 1875 m³ by 2033. Water shortages are expected to worsen as current water demand is still relatively low at 461 m³ per capita compared with the world average of 645 m³, but this number is projected to reach 665 m³ by 2030. Water shortages will be worse in the arid and semi-arid areas in China’s northern plain from which much of the future grain output growth will be generated. In addition to water shortages, problems with irrigation system will also stymie yield growth. During the Mao-era, irrigated area tripled. Since de-collectivization, the irrigation system has deteriorated. With the reversion to family and commercial farming, control of the irrigation system has fragmented, and it is harder to mobilize mass labor for maintenance and construction. The introduction of water fees in the 1980s was designed to encourage more efficient water usage, but the fees were not sufficiently high to have the desired effect. Water designated for agricultural usage continues to be subsidized at a far higher rate than it is for industry and household use, and raising agricultural water fees remains politically difficult. Moreover, the collection of water use data remains imperfect, thus further challenging China’s ability to effectively price water used for agricultural purposes. Going forward, increasing water charges it is likely to be an essential step to dealing with China’s water shortages.

As water becomes increasingly scarce, the agricultural sector will continue to compete with the industrial sector and with households for scant water resources. According to the Ministry of Water Resources China now uses as much as 60% of the water running in many of its rivers, including the Liao and Yellow Rivers, and as much as 90% of the Huai River. China has increasingly turned to aquifers and lakes to meet water demands no longer satisfied by rain and river water alone. Groundwater now provides potable water for nearly 70% of China’s population and irrigation for approximately 40% of its agricultural land in China’s dry northern and northwestern regions. Nationally, groundwater usage has almost doubled since 1970, and now accounts for almost 20% of China’s total water usage.

Due to an uneven distribution of water resources between the north and the south of China, aquifers are especially important in China’s north, where farmers have been relying heavily on groundwater resources to increase agricultural yields. Yet China is now draining its aquifers at an unsustainable rate. At current rates of depletion, the World Bank estimates that China’s northern aquifers could effectively run dry in as little as 30 years or less. China’s northern megacities now rely on underground water sources for two-thirds of their needs. For example, in Hebei province, which surrounds Beijing, aquifer levels are dropping by approximately 3 meters annually, forcing the digging of ever deeper wells. These deeper wells in turn increase both the risk of both saltwater and arsenic intruding into the water supply and likelihood of land subsidence. With aquifers and rivers suffering from overuse, lakes are also diminishing. The province of Hebei, for instance, has already lost a staggering 969 of its 1052 lakes. While China’s ‘Water Pollution Prevention & Control Action Plan’ has establish targets to restrict ground water extraction and groundwater pollution by 2020, water restriction measures have both proved unpopular and hard to enforce.

Pollution is also challenging China’s agricultural output. China’s use of coal that is high in sulfur and heavy metals to power many of its electricity plants. The pollution from these power plants combined with additional industrial and agricultural pollution contaminate both China’s soil, air, and water. In the north, for instance, the same northern provinces that accounted for 55% of China’s farmland also hold 86% of its coal reserves yet have just 16% of China’s water resources. In the south, over 50% of China’s rice is grown in provinces which account for 52% of its arsenic, 58% of its mercury and 72% of its chromium discharges.

Maintaining Future Grain Yields – Small Farms

China’s future yield growth is also hampered by the small area plowed by each farmer, averaging .65 hectares or 1.6 acres. While de-collectivization from large communal plots to small family farms initially led to a surge in output growth, the segmentation of communal plots is now proving a constraint on grain yields. It has been estimated that increasing farm sizes could increase grain output by as much as 70 million tons annually. Small farm sizes restrict growth by preventing farmers from capturing economies of scale that could be derived from greater mechanization, from the more efficient dissemination of new seed technologies and from the improved maintenance of irrigation structures. Small farms also make it more challenging for farmers to participate in modern supply chains, to offset market volatility and to adapt to climate change, Additionally, small farms tend to use fertilizers and pesticides inefficiently. Research by Nerissa Hannik found that a 1% increase in farm size was linked to a .3 and a .5% decrease in fertilizer and pesticide use per hectare, respectively. Excessive use of fertilizers and pesticides in turn pollute soil and water which in turn depresses crop yields.

Small farms drive down rural incomes. As approximately 35% of Chinese workers or about 311 million people were employed in agriculture in some form in 2017, the impact on rural incomes is significant. In 2018, the annual per capita disposable income of urban and rural households in China was 39,251 and 14,617, respectively. Reduced rural economic opportunity in turn dis-incentivizes younger and more educated workers from pursuing a career in agriculture As a result, the average age of the Chinese agricultural worker is higher than the age of Chinese workers generally and is increasingly less educated than his urban counterpart. Older, less educated farmers could cause structural stagnation in the agricultural sector.  Such farmers may fail to adopt new technologies, innovate, and adapt to changing market conditions.

The fact that farmers lease – as opposed to own – their land has also worked to constrain grain yield by discouraging long-term investment and growth in land size. Individuals cannot privately own land in China but can acquire transferable land-use rights for some number of years. Currently, for example, land-use rights for residential purposes is 70 years. All farming or rural land is owned by rural collectives which distribute contract rights for plots of farmland to eligible households. The first leases issued in 1983 were for a duration of 15 years. These were renewed in 1997 for 30 years and again in 2017 for an additional 30 years. As part of its land-use contract, Chinese farmers have the right to decide which crops to plant, to keep all agricultural proceeds, and to sublease their land to others for agricultural production. Chinese farmers are prohibited from using contracted land for non-agricultural purposes, to leave their land fallow for more than two years or to legally oppose the government if it decides to acquire the property for development purposes. To help improve rural household stability, in 2003, China passed the Rural Land Contract Law. The law endeavors to improve the security of land tenure, to clarify the transfer and exchange rights of contracted land, and to permit family members to inherit land during the contracted period. Above all, the law reflects the government’s attempts to allow those staying in farming to gain access to additional cultivated land and to increase their incomes and competitiveness. It strives to encourage farmers to use the land more efficiently.

GuoZhongHua / Shutterstock.com

Working against government efforts to improve plot size, however is the belief by some Chinese leaders that family farming provides at least nominal proof that China is still communist as its land is not privately held, and as its land is relatively equally distributed. Many Chinese leaders also believe that agricultural land provides a social security system for its population, as every rural family is theoretically only one season away from being able to feed itself.

That said, the fact that the government no longer plays a significant role in agricultural production. Aside from restrictions on land ownership, China today has one of the least distorted domestic agricultural economies in the world. Most grains, oilseeds, and fiber crops, and all horticultural and livestock products are sold to small private traders who compete in efficient and integrated markets with minimal regulation.

Insuring Safe Food

In 2008, Chinese domestic milk and infant formula was found to have been purposely tainted with melamine, sickening 300,000 babies, and killing six. Other food scandals include contaminated pork, fake eggs, gutter oil, and counterfeit foods mislabeled as brand name or organic products. These scandals have caused many Chinese to express serious reservations about the quality of domestic food sources and to call for industry reform. The 13th Five Year Plan addressed these concerns by committing to upgrade agricultural standards and to ensure the quality and safety of all food products over the entire journey of agricultural products from farm to table.

In May 2019, the Chinese Communist Party reinvigorated this goal when China declared that it would be stepping up its enforcement of food safety legislation as part of the Communist Party’s campaign called “Staying True to Our Founding Mission”. Between June and December 2019, its increased efforts have resulted in the identification of 70,000 food safety violations, culminating in the suspension of over 2400 food manufacturers and the meting out of approximately $130 million in fines. Additionally, China is increasingly implementing technologies such as sensors, artificial intelligence, and block chain IDs to improve the traceability of food products from farm to table. Other measures include increased supervision with more random checks and the tightening of food safety standards. By 2035, it is China’s goal to have in place world-leading food safety standards and globally advanced risk control capabilities.

GMO in China

Genetically engineered or transgenic organisms, also known as genetically modified organisms (GMOs), were first made available to US consumers in 1994. By 2014, approximately 28 countries sowed GM crops on more than 181 million hectares, equaling 13% of the world’s arable surface. GM soybeans, cotton, maize, oilseed, and rape account for approximately 82%, 68%, 30% and 25% of the total planted area for these crops, respectively. In 2015, the United States Food and Drug Administration authorized the first genetically modified animal for human consumption.

Advocates of GMO food note that such crops could help the world adopt to changing climatic conditions including drought, cold and soil salinization. Additionally, by genetically coding in natural pesticides and other disease-resistant characteristics, GMO foods also offer the opportunity to fight off pests and diseases while correspondingly lowering the use of pesticides. Crops can also be modified to increase crop yields. Among their many concerns, opponents of GMO foods note that the long-term health consequences of consuming GMO food have yet to be determined. Additionally, opponents fear that GMO plants will diminish biodiversity by contaminating wild species.

Despite the risks of GMO plants, China’s 13th Five Year Plan sets as a goal to develop a modern seed industry, including the development superior seed varieties, and cultivation breeding-promotion operations. In January 2020, the Chinese government stated that genetically modified corn, cotton, and soybean species had passed biosafety evaluations, inching the country closer to commercialization of new GMO food sources. These crops were modified to be more resilient against disease and pests. On paper, China has approved biotech cotton, papaya, tomatoes, sweet peppers, petunias, and poplar trees. However, commercialization has been allowed only for papaya and cotton.

In 2018, the global market value of GM crop seeds was $20.1 billion and is expected to grow to $30.2 billion by 2026. As one of the world’s leading countries in the research and development of agricultural biotechnology, China’s issue of bio certificates for soybeans, cotton and corn indicates its interest in capitalizing on its billions of dollars of investment in the field, including its $43 billion purchase of the Swiss pesticide giant Syngenta in 2016. Not only would China benefit from commercializing its GMO seeds to sell globally, but many studies have indicated that China would also enjoy substantial economic benefits from the cultivation of GMO food crops domestically.

The commercialization of China’s GMO technology has been hampered, however, by the Chinese public’s negative attitude toward GMO crops. As per a 2010 online survey interviewing 50,000 people, about 84% of respondents said that they feared GM foods for safety reasons. A 2018 nationwide survey found that those views had not substantially shifted with 46.7% of respondents expressing negative views of GMOs and with 14% considering GMO products to be form of bioterrorism targeting China.

The Chinese public’s disapproving views concerning GMO products likely originate from their experience of the various food scandals that have plagued the country. This adverse experience has likely also negatively impacted their views of genetically modified foods. Exacerbating their concerns has been the discovery that GMO food products have already been farmed illegally in China. In 2014, China Central Television (CCTV) tested five bags of rice from a Wuhan supermarket in Hubei province, and discovered that three of the five samples had been grown from genetically modified seeds. In the same year, illegal large-scale planting of GMO rice and corn in four provinces were reported. In 2016, it was revealed that 93% of corn from Liaoning province demonstrated traces of GMO contamination. In response, the government destroyed crops, confiscated illegal seeds, and prosecuted perpetrators.

The Chinese government is now working to change Chinese opinion regarding GMO products. Given what is at play, the stakes could not be higher. Not only has China made massive investments in the technology that it now wants to commercialize, but water shortages, climate change and its growing population will continue to place unprecedented pressure on its food supply. GMO products can help China adapt to these challenges. GMO crops should also enable China to reduce its extremely high use of fertilizers and pesticides which in turn will have positive impacts on its environment and food supply.

The Automation of Agriculture

While the percentage of the Chinese workforce involved in farming has decreased from 55% in 1991 to 18% in 2017, approximately 250 million Chinese still work as farmers. However, as China’s rural young becomes increasingly educated, and as China’s economy continues to expand, many are migrating to urban areas seeking better opportunity. As a result, approximately 60% of people working in Chinese agriculture are over 45 years compared to just 14% of farmers who are less than 35 years. This decline in farm labor is projected to increase over the coming decades even as China’s population is projected to continue to grow through 2035. Contemporaneously, China’s population is expected to become wealthier. Growing wealth correlates with a rising consumer demand for greater food variety and for more animal-based proteins. The water footprint per calorie pulses, eggs, chicken, pigs, sheep, and beef is 2.5, 2.0, 2.6, 3.6, 5.3, and 9.4 times larger than grains, respectively. This increase in water per calorie will further stress China’s polluted and limited per capita water supply.

AgridronesChina is answering these challenges by significantly investing in agricultural technologies including artificial intelligence, big data, robotics, and automation.   Not only will these technologies help improve the efficiency and sustainability of China’s agricultural market, but they also represent a big and rapidly growing global business. The market for global agricultural robots, for instance, is projected to exceed $20 billion by the end of 2025, with growth in precision agriculture as a major driver. Artificial intelligence, automation, big data, and robotics are expected to find applications in everything from herding and fish farming to planting and harvesting. Other uses include seeding, irrigation, water leak detection, fertilizing, crop weeding, spraying, crop monitoring and analysis, disease and pest identification and eradication, thinning and pruning, and tracking the growth of plants. In addition to robotics, drones are also increasingly being used to monitor crops, conduct field analysis, manage livestock, plan interrogation and crop spraying. Drones aid farmers to see the big picture of their farmland and to make educated decisions that help to maximize crop yields.

Improving agricultural sustainability is another factor motivating China’s adoption of agricultural technology. China’s farming industry has a significant carbon footprint, with Chinese farmers using 30% of the world’s fertilizers and pesticides on 9% of global farmland. In addition to developing drones and robots that can help to reduce fertilizer and pesticide needs, Chinese scientists are also turning to big data to determine best farming practices. Over 20 million farmers have since benefited from China’s big data research; it is estimated the findings have enabled farmers to increase yields while slashing fertilizer use generating total financial savings of an estimated $12 billion.

China’s Growing Presence in Agriculture Abroad

In the coming decades, China will face of an increasing divergence between demand for food and its ability to produce that food domestically. This divergence is driven by factors such as a population that will continue to grow through at least 2035, a more wealthy population that is demanding a more varied and a more meat-based diet, and limited and polluted land and water resources. As a result, China is increasingly looking to international markets to meet its food shortfalls.

According to the United States Department of Agriculture’s 2018 report, in 2016 an estimated 1,300 Chinese enterprises had made overseas agriculture, forestry, and fisheries investments in over 100 countries. These investments were valued at approximately $26 billion. The investments were placed in a variety of sectors including land purchase, land leasing, seeds, farm inputs, farm machinery, food processing, farm logistics, farm machinery, livestock farming, and fish farming. China’s National Bureau of Statistics noted that Chinese investment in foreign farming, forestry, and fishing grew fivefold from 2010 to 2016. Many of China’s agricultural investments are now made in conjunction with its China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

As has been the case in other foreign investment sectors, China’s government has supported this international investment by favorable lending, brokering deals, formulating strategic plans which support low-cost bidding, and providing Chinese agricultural investors with training and information services. China subsidizes these investments for both political and economic reasons. Economic aims include the continued growth of the Chinese economy, securing access to raw materials, the expansion of exports, helping Chinese companies garner a larger share of profits from imported commodities, creating new markets for Chinese products, enabling tariff-free access to developed markets, shifting some of Chinese domestic manufacturing and domestic agriculture overseas, providing domestic companies with international experience, food security, gaining and imparting technical and managerial experience, and exerting influence on global prices. Political objectives include the preservation of the Communist Party rule, reestablishing China’s place as a leading world power, the promotion of multi-polarity, countering US hegemony, increasing Chinese influence in multinational institutions such as United Nations and World Bank, strengthening its alliances with other countries, particularly in the Third World, preventing Taiwan independence, and projecting political influence abroad.

Future Trends

There will be several trends to watch for in the Chinese agricultural sector in the coming decades. Firstly, China will make every effort to maintain its agricultural yields and its food self-sufficiency. Despite its rapid rate of urbanization, China is committed to maintaining a baseline for cultivated land area at 124 million hectares. It is investing heavily in agricultural research to increase yields and is launching a campaign to win public support for the introduction of more GMO crops.

China is also committed to increasing the sustainability of its agriculture and the safety of its food supplies. China is investing heavily in big data, drone technologies, artificial intelligence, and automation to reduce its use of pesticides, fertilizer, and water. Upgrading antiquated and leaking irrigation networks is a high priority. China is also using technology to start tracking its food as it journeys from farm to table; therefore, when food safety breaches arise, it can more effectively follow the breach back to the source. China will also continue to improve its food safety both through increased inspections, and better safety practices and standards.

China will also carry on investing in international agricultural, livestock and aquaculture food chains. These investments will help China ensure reliable and secure overseas food resources. They will also help to increase global food production overall, therefore helping to keep in check global food prices.

Finally, as the number of Chinese working as farmers further declines over the coming decades, China will likely begin to amalgamate its millions of small farms into increasingly larger parcels. Increasing farm sizes will free labor to work in areas which will provide China a higher return on labor capital.  Larger farm sizes will also increase productivity by creating more opportunity for mechanization, and by reducing demand for farm inputs such as pesticides and fertilizers.

References

TonyV3112 / Shutterstock.com

Population Power: China’s Shifting Masses

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Introduction

China’s enormous population is one of the country’s most defining features. With the largest population in the world, almost one-fifth of the global total, it factors into nearly every significant issue facing the country including employment, consumption, the environment, and migration. In the 1970s, faced with the prospect of its population outstripping its economic and agricultural output, Beijing reversed early Maoist policies encouraging population growth. China’s 1970s aggressive fertility education programs and its 1980 “One-Child Policy” succeeded in reducing births per woman from their peak of 5.8 at the beginning of the 1970s to approximately 1.6 in 2019. The success of China’s population control policies has had unexpected disadvantages including a male/female sex imbalance, a rapidly aging population and a shrinking labor force. In 2016, such difficulties caused China to change the One-Child Policy to a Two-Child Policy.  Nevertheless, despite policy changes and China’s declining numbers, China’s large population still poses significant challenges for the country.

Global Population Trends

Understanding global population trends brings context to China’s individual demographic numbers. According to the United Nations 2019 Population Report, the global population is expected to rise from 7.7 billion in 2019 to approximately 10.9-11.2 billion in 2100.  By then, approximately 81% of the world’s population will be living in Africa and Asia.

 

UN Population Statistics – Geographical Regions  
Regions 2019 2019 2030 2030 2050 2050 2100 2100
World       7,713       8,548       9,735     10,875
Sub-Saharan Africa       1,066 14%       1,400 16%       2,118 22%       3,775 35%
Northern Africa and Western Asia           517 7%           609 7%           754 8%           924 8%
Central and Southern Asia       1,991 26%       2,227 26%       2,496 26%       2,334 21%
Eastern and Southeastern Asia       2,335 30%       2,427 28%       2,411 25%       1,967 18%
Latin America and the Caribbean           648 8%           706 8%           762 8%           680 6%
Australia/ New Zealand             30 0.4%             33 0.4%             38 0.4%             49 0.5%
Oceania             12 0.2%             15 0.2%             19 0.2%             26 0.2%
Europe and North America       1,114 14%       1,132 13%       1,136 12%       1,120 10%

 

Sub-Saharan Africa will experience the greatest growth. As a proportion of global population, between 2019 and 2100, the region will increase from 14% of the total or 1.1 billion people to 35% or 3.8 billion. Between 2019 and 2050, the world’s 47 least developed countries will grow the fastest, with many countries doubling in size. Of the 2019-2050 expected increase of 2.1 billion people, half the increase is projected to be driven by just nine countries: India, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Pakistan, Ethiopia, the United Republic of Tanzania, the United States, Uganda and Indonesia.

Sub-Saharan Africa

As a proportion of the global total, the rest of the world will experience flat or decreasing population levels. Flat-growth regions include North Africa and West Asia which are projected to grow from 7%-8% or 527 to 924 million people between 2019 and 2100. Oceania will stay steady at .2% or 12 to 26 million people. Australia and New Zealand will grow from .4%-.5% or 30 to 49 million people.

 

Those with shrinking populations between 2019 and 2020 include Europe and North America which will decline from 14% to 10% of the global total, holding steady at approximately 1.1 billion. Latin America and the Caribbean will drop from 8% or 648 million to 6% or 680 million people. Central and Southern Asia will drop from 26% or 2.0 billion to 21% or 2.3 billion people. Eastern and Southeastern Asia will decrease from 30% or 2.3 billion to 18% or 2.0 billion people. In Europe, the population is expected to peak in 2030 at 510 million and then decrease to 465 million by 2100.

In 2019, China at 1.4 billion and India at 1.3 billion accounted for 37% of global population. In 2100, China at 1.1 billion and India at 1.45 billion will drop to 23% of the global total. By 2024, India is forecasted to overtake China to become the world’s most populous country.

Rapid worldwide urbanization is a big driver in the decreasing fertility rates seen in most regions.  In 2019, approximately 55% of people worldwide lived in cities. By 2050, the percentage increases to 68%, and by 2100 to 84%. Urbanization places downward pressure on birth rates because children that were once useful as farm labor become burdens in cities where they need to be educated and trained in order to be economically productive. Additionally, urban women have better access to education, healthcare and work opportunities, all of which make them less inclined to have large families.

Worldwide, in most countries where populations are declining, people are also quickly aging. In 2100, the number of people 60 years or over is expected to grow to 28% of the total population, from 1.0 billion to 3.1 billion people. The number aged 80 or over will increase to 8%, from approximately .1 billion to .9 billion people. Correspondingly, the global fertility rate is expected to drop from 2.5 in 2019 to 1.9 births in 2100. The global fertility rate is expected to fall below the replacement fertility rate by the year 2070, with the replacement fertility rate being the level of birth that each female is required to have to keep up with the population size. This aging population is expected to affect everything from economic demand to social safety nets.

Emigration and immigration are also impacting population levels in some countries. Countries such as Bangladesh, Nepal, the Philippines, Syria, Venezuela, and Myanmar have seen over 1 million of its citizens emigrate since 2010, either in search of work opportunities or to escape war or internal domestic conflict. Conversely, since 2010, over 36 countries have welcomed over 200,000 immigrants.

China’s Population Trends

China is experiencing rapid demographic change that mirrors many global trends. As is happening in many East Asian countries, China’s population is declining both in absolute numbers and as a percentage of the world total. According to UN statistics, in 2019, China’s population was approximately 1.434 billion people or 19% of the global total. By 2035, China’s population is expected to peak at 1.461 billion people or 16%. By 2050 and 2100, China’s population will reduce to 1.402 billion or 14%. and 1.064 billion or 10% respectively. Currently, the fertility rate of China is 1.55 births per woman.

China’s population faces a significant sex imbalance. In 2019, there were approximately 37 million additional males to females, with males accounting for 51.30% of the total.  While the absolute number of additional males is forecasted to decrease, as a percentage of China’s total population, males will continue to outnumber females through 2100. By 2050, for instance, China will have 24 million more males than females, with males accounting for 50.87%. By 2100, males still exceed females by 25 million or 51.15% of the total.

China’s population is also aging rapidly. In 1980, China’s population aged 50+ was 14% of the total, with people aged 75+ accounting for just 1% of those in the 50+ category. In 2019, China’s population aged 50+ increased to 32%, with people aged 75+ accounting for 3% of 50+ category total. By 2050, China’s population 50+ surpasses 47%, with 14.1% of this group aged 75+. By 2100, this group exceeds 49%, with 20% of this group being 75 years or older.

UN Population Statistics – China – By Age Category  
Age Demographics 1980 2020 2050 2100
0-14 35.9% 17.7% 14.1% 13.8%
15-49 49.7% 49.5% 38.7% 36.6%
50+ 14.4% 32.8% 47.2% 49.6%
75+ 1.2% 3.7% 14.1% 20.0%

China’s Population Post-1949

TonyV3112 / Shutterstock.com

For the best part of two millennia, China had been the most world’s populous country. In the early 1800s, for instance, one-third of the world population was Chinese. While still having the world’s largest population in 1950, between 1850 and 1950, high death rates caused by disease, crop failure, natural disasters, and war restrained China’s population growth to 0.3% per year. In 1949, after the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) victory in the Chinese Civil War, early CCP policies led to improvements in nutrition, sanitation and increased access to healthcare. Chinese mortality rates, especially those of infants, plummeted and the population began to grow rapidly. Initially, China’s leader, Mao Zedong, considered a large and rapidly growing population to be a positive asset. More people meant more workers to aid in economic development. More people meant more soldiers to ensure Communist domestic control, to secure China’s international borders and to prosecute war. Mao believed that Malthusian theory –the principle that exponential population growth can lead to an inability to feed the population – was a capitalist paradigm that did not apply to Marxist production methods where more people created more economic output.

As a result, China’s population continued the tradition of seeking as many sons as possible. According to U.N. statistics, between 1950 and 1980, China’s population almost doubled, increasing from 554 million to just over 1 billion. Officials in China were aware of China’s exploding population in the decades after 1949. Yet, any talk of population control or family planning was labeled as defeatist.

By the end of the 1960s, concerns regarding China’s exploding population began to be more discussed more openly. In 1970, Beijing decided to implement a voluntary birth control system. The government made contraceptives more widely available and educated the public on new government family planning policies with slogans promoting “later marriages, longer birth intervals and fewer children”. The program was largely successful. China’s total fertility rate, which measures the average number of births per woman, plummeted from 5.8 in 1970 to 2.7 in 1978. A 1980 study, undertaken to determine what would be China’s ideal population in 2080, assuming significant modernization and economic growth, concluded that the optimum level was between 650 and 700 million. As China’s population in 1980 had already exceeded 1 billion citizens, the government decided to implement more draconian population control measures.

The ‘One-Child’ Policy 

In September 1980, China launched the One-Child Policy. Family planning was written into the constitution two years later. The policy was not implemented uniformly across the country. Most ethnic minorities were permitted to have two children and many Han living in rural areas could have a second child if the first child was a girl. Additionally, parents whose first child was disabled could have a second child. Nevertheless, by the late 1990s, China’s total fertility rate fell to between 1·5 and 1·7 where it has remained.

The One-Child Policy was implemented relatively easily in the cities, where both spouses often worked and where living conditions were cramped. Resistance in the countryside was greater. The rural desire for larger families and many sons has been deeply rooted, not least because more hands make agricultural work easier for all. In general, there has been a high correlation between higher income and the willingness to accept the One-Child Policy.

One result of the policy has been greater incidences of forced sterilizations and abortions (Short, 2000). More commonly, couples defying the One-Child Policy were subject to fines, loss of jobs, reduced wages, loss of work unit benefits or, in some cases, loss of bonuses for the entire workgroup. In some areas, relatively wealthy families who worked in the private sector were able to pay the fines imposed. Those working in the public sector did not have this freedom as a second child usually meant a loss of employment. Others did not report females at birth. Unregistered girls were at risk of losing access to many legal benefits, including education and other forms of social welfare. It is not clear exactly how many unregistered girls were born in China since 1980, but research by John Jay Kennedy at the University of Kansas estimates that 10 million undocumented girls were born from 1980-2010.

The One-Child Policy has also led to an imbalance in the male/female sex ratio. In 2019, there was an estimated 37 million more men than women. Termed “Bare Branches” in China, these men are statistically unlikely to find partners in a society where universal marriage is the norm; 99.5% of Chinese women and 97% of all Chinese men marry.  Men who do marry tend to be those with higher incomes, better educations and higher-value assets, including an apartment, house or car. Surplus men tend to be concentrated in rural villages that are poverty stricken. Those men unable to find wives statistically are more likely to engage in prostitution, social unrest and crime.

A benefit of this imbalance has been a greater trend toward gender equality.  Historically, Chinese parents devoted relatively few resources to their daughters.  A 2018 study by Yi Zeng and Therese Hesketh found that without brothers with which to compete, there were no significant differences between single-girl and single-boy families in terms of a family’s investment in and expectation for health and education outcomes. In 2018, women made up 52% of undergraduates and 48% of postgraduates.  Having less children has also improved women’s access to well-paid work and career advancement. In 2018, it is estimated that as many as 25% of CEOs of medium and large Chinese companies are women.

China’s Rapidly Aging Population

The One-Child Policy has also contributed to China’s rapidly aging population. In 1980, China’s population aged 50+ was 14% of the total, with people aged 75+ accounting for just 1% of those in the 50+ category. In 2019, China’s population aged 50+ increased to 32%, with people aged 75+ accounting for 3% of 50+ category total. By 2050, China’s population 50+ surpasses 47%, with 14.1% of this group aged 75+. By 2100, this group exceeds 49%, with 20% of this group being 75 years or older.

 

china population 2100

This rapidly aging population will place a great burden on the younger segments of society as the elderly dependency ratio increases sharply. The elderly dependency ratio is defined as the number of people aged 65+ years divided by number of working-age people aged 18–64 years. As dictated both by Chinese culture and by Chinese law, Chinese children are obliged to care for their retired parents. The strain of caring for the elderly is expected to be more significant in the countryside. The elderly in rural areas generally enjoy a less robust social safety net compared to those living in in urban areas. On average, rural lifetime incomes are less as well, leading to lower retirement savings. Rural elderly are also more vulnerable to living alone, as many rural children have migrated to cities to find work. Rural empty-nesters, especially those living alone, are more likely to suffer mental health, financial and other problems.

The Two-Child Policy

Because of these negative population trends, in January 2016, China’s One-Child Policy changed to a Two-Child Policy. For the first time in 36 years, no one in China is limited to having just one child. The policy was aimed at the 90 million women within the reproductive age that presently had a child and now would be permitted to have a second child. In some provinces, these policies have been supplemented by incentives such as encouraging employers to provide more services for families, to lengthen maternity leave, to offer aid to women returning to work after birth and to grant tax incentives, housing benefits and education cost deductions. Some provinces are making abortions harder to obtain and using courts to discourage couples from accessing divorce services.

Despite these efforts, the significant socioeconomic changes that occurred since the onset of the One-Child Policy have caused China to transform into a low fertility culture. These changes are consistent with the pattern countries follow as they become more developed. Studies have indicated that most Chinese rural women want 1 to 2 children compared to greater than 5 children desired in the 1970s. Most urban women continue to want only one child. Urban women’s list of reasons for their one child preference include the high cost of raising and educating children, the negative effect a larger family would have on her family’s lifestyle and her individual liberties, the greater strain more children would place on family income and the impact more children might have on a her career. Factors affecting rural fertility include a woman’s marriage age, the cost of children, income forgone for having children and the social security benefits available. The Two-Child Policy is therefore unlikely to unleash a baby boom, but rather should cause a modest increase in fertility. That said, many of the negative effects of the one-child policy are likely to disappear. These include forced abortions and sterilizations, female infanticide or abandonment and unregistered girls at birth.

The Changing Structure of the Labor Force

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Since 1980, the age structure of China’s population has provided China with an enormous competitive economic advantage. Specifically, since 1980, China’s population has been both young and relatively free of dependents, whether they are children or elderly parents needing care. In 1980, for example, 85% of its population was aged 49 years or younger, with 50% of that population falling into the 15-49 year working age bracket. In 2019, 50% of China’s population was still aged 15-49, but its total population aged 49 years or younger has decreased from 85% to 67%. China’s current low dependency rate derives from the fact that Chinese ‘baby boomers’ born in the 1960s after the Great Leap Forward, and their children born in the 1980s, are now of working age. During the 1980s, China’s working age population increased 2.5% annually; this increase, coupled with high rural-to-urban migration, meant that the overall urban labor force has grown at about 4% per year between 1978 and 2010. It is expected that between 2010-2027, the number of Chinese workers will level off and then begin to drop approximately .5% per year. This decline will mirror a rising dependency rate as the ratio of producers to total population decreases.

The historically low dependency rate has created a “demographic dividend” for China.  The demographic dividend is the economic growth potential that can result from shifts in a population’s age structure, mainly when the share of the working-age population is larger than the non-working-age share of the population.  China’s low dependency rate since 1980 has also helped drive high savings rates, as individuals tend to save when they work and then spend their savings upon retiring. This savings has provided the Chinese economy with significant investment capital which in turn has led to the creation of more jobs. China’s young, unencumbered population has also benefited China economically, as it has been more adaptable to the rapid social and economic changes that have attended China’s transition to a market economy.

In 1978, 99% of these Chinese laborers worked in government-owned enterprises. In 2014, Chinese workers are employed by a more diversified set of companies in terms of ownership structure. While 25% of urban workers still work for the government or government-controlled entities including collectives and state-owned enterprises, 43% work for privately-owned firms, and 32% are self-employed or work in the informal economy.

Going forward, the growth of China’s labor force will slow as the last baby boom cohorts are absorbed. According to UN population calculations, by 2050, 47% of Chinese people will be over 50 years compared to 33% in 2019. Between 2020 and 2050, Chinese workers – those aged between 15-59 years – will decrease by over 200 million people, an average of 7 million people annually.

To offset its diminishing labor pool, China has many tools at its disposal. A start has been the easing of the One-Child Policy. Although it is too early to measure accurately the impact of the Two-Child Policy, early research indicates that the population bump will be relatively small. Population is now expected to peak at 1·45 billion in 2029 compared with a peak of 1·4 billion in 2023. In addition to implementing the Two-Child Policy, China can continue to modernize and mechanize China’s farming. Chinese fields typically average 2.5 acres, one of the smallest averages in the world. Increasing farm size will facilitate the use of modern farming technologies. Both will create opportunities for the remaining 27% of Chinese workers still employed in agriculture to migrate to the industrial workforce. Automation and robotics can also offset labor declines and increase labor productivity. Overall, Chinese labor productivity is likely to rise in coming decades because incoming labor cohorts are more educated than their parents. China can also extend the retirement age. Currently, men retire at 60 years and women retire at 55 years.

Urbanization

Rapid urbanization has accompanied China’s economic development. Historically, China has been a country of farmers. In 1950, when the Communists took control, only about 10% of the country lived in cities. Early Chinese Communists policies reinforced this rural population bias by creating what amounted to a two-tier economic system.  Chinese urban citizens, enmeshed in danweis or urban work units, enjoyed social benefits and welfare entitlements not available to farmers housed in the rural collectives. This inequality was designed to generate rapid industrialization. Rural China was to provide low-cost food and other agricultural products to city workers who used the savings from these low-cost goods to invest in and build China’s factories.

In order to prevent peasants from migrating to seek better work and greater benefits, the household registration system (hukou) was developed which was accompanied by a system of vouchers which were required to acquire food and clothing. By the early 1960s, it became almost impossible for rural workers to obtain an urban hukou, and rural to urban migration was almost completely halted. Indeed, internal migration between 1964 and 1980 was almost exclusively from the city to the countryside as happened during the Cultural Revolution when approximately 17 million middle school graduates were sent to the country to “learn from the peasants” and as happened when workers were sent to develop industry in Western China. As a result of these measures, by 1978, only 17.92% of Chinese lived in cities.

After 1980, China began to rapidly urbanize as its economy expanded. According to World Bank statistics, in 2018, approximately 59% of Chinese live in cities or almost 850 million people. By 2030, it is estimated that 70% or one billion of Chinese will be urban residents. Some urban growth has occurred by reclassifying rural areas to urban areas, but most of the growth in the urban residential rate represents real rural to urban migration. Currently, China has 65 cities over 1 million people, and 15 cities with population larger than 10 million. According to World Atlas statistics, in 2019, Ghangzhou was China’s largest city with 44.2 million people followed by Shanghai with 36 million people.

Internal Migration and the Hukou System

To control its large population, in the 1950s, China implemented the household registration or hukou system. This system effectively tied people to the place in which their Hukou registration card was issued. Children inherited their hukou status from their parents. Besides controlling internal migration, the hukou system controlled the internal distribution of resources such as food and clothing. The hukou system prioritized urban workers over rural workers. Non-agricultural and urban residents were granted significantly better benefits including superior employment opportunities, free education for their children, free and more-advanced medical care, subsidized housing and retirement pensions. By contrast, rural residents received few benefits and were also required to sell their produce to the government at discounted rates in order to finance urban subsidies. Inferior benefits and poorer educational and work opportunities has meant that rural residents have experienced significantly less upward mobility when compared to urban inhabitants. Chinese police have also used hukou registration to more closely watch problematic citizens such as political activists or convicted criminals.

In the 1980s, agricultural reforms led to surplus labor at a time when industrial economic reforms caused the demand for urban workers to increase. As a result, China began to cautiously modify Hukou restrictions. In 1984, for instance, China created the “self-supplied food grain” hukou which allowed rural residents to live in market towns if they had local employment, housing and food. In 1992, wealthy and educated individuals could earn urban residency under the “blue stamp” hukou designation if they had significant funds to invest in urban areas.

In addition to workers migrating with new Hukou status, millions of rural Chinese have also traveled to cities illegally. Illegal migration has been facilitated by the steady reduction in the use of Hukou ration vouchers, meaning that unregistered migrants have been able to purchase food and clothing once they have reached the city. According to Chinese labor bulletin statistics, in 2018, approximately 30% of the workforce or 288 million workers are currently part of what is termed China’s floating population. Most of these migrants live on the periphery of cities often in substandard housing. They work long hours and expect to return home once they have met their financial objectives. Migrant workers tend to take jobs that urban residents are either unable or unwilling to do. Male migrants, for instance, dominate employment in sectors such as construction, while females work in textile and other factories were work is strenuous and often dull.

Migrants lack channels into urban society including access to education, housing and social services that go with full urban citizenship. In comparison to urban residents, rural people have lower educational levels and are equipped with less capital. They also suffer the economic and emotional impact of remoteness and they endure incomplete markets for many needed resources. Without access to education, many migrants leave their children behind with family members in the countryside. Typical work schedules mean that visits home occur infrequently, often just once a year.

As its floating population has grown, China has continued to address migrant disadvantages through gradual modifications of registration requirements.  This process has been implemented in starts and stops. Reforms began first in small towns and cities. Where migrants can demonstrate extended residence, secure housing and steady income, it has become easier to transfer their hukou registration. Since 2001, larger cities have also begun some limited easing of hukou restrictions. In 2014, the national government has reiterated its pledge to continue to gradually eliminate the urban registration system. Cities and towns with populations under 1 million people are now required to eliminate restrictions entirely and promptly. Cities of 1- 5 million people have been given more open-ended deadlines to meet hukou reform goals. Cities with populations greater than 5 million people can continue to restrict access to permanent registration.

Where local cities have tried to push back on allowing more migrants to formally register, they have done so by defining criteria strictly. For instance, many cities have interpreted the steady source of income criteria in a way that excludes the unskilled jobs that employ many migrants. Other cities have required educational or wealth criteria that are often not met by many in China’s floating population.

These criteria effectively keep in place the significant barriers stopping low-wage earners from being upwardly mobile. They have minimized the impact of the reform by limiting its benefits to a small part of the migrant population. Cities often support these barriers because adding migrants to the formal registration system generates meaningful educational, healthcare, housing and other social costs. Barriers also entrench urban privileges from which city officials themselves benefit, and act to keep urban populations loyal. Hukou restrictions have prioritized the economic growth of China’s urban areas over rural areas. Rural migrants subsidize urban industrial growth by providing low-cost, benefit-free labor. Hukou allows urban environments to control the numbers of such workers by preserving their option to remove illegal workers from the city when their labor is no longer beneficial.  One way that local Chinese governments have tried to mask the existence of continuing barriers is by eliminating hukou labels – rural, urban, blue stamp, etc. – while keeping in place the criteria that made the labels relevant in the first place. That said, overall, the trend is that household registration restrictions are continuing to ease even if progress is slow.

Additionally, other migrant-beneficial reforms are being promoted. For instance, there have been efforts made to rein in detrimental police practices including coercive custody and repatriation, dragnet sweeps and extortion. Other directives have stipulated that more effort should be made to educate the children of migrants working within local jurisdictions. Some local governments have tried to skirt this requirement by making education available only to those migrants who have no family members still residing in their hukou registration jurisdiction. Where education is provided, migrants often are required to pay additional fees not required by local hukou holders. These fees often represent a significant percentage of the migrant’s annual income and represent an additional income source for schools. In order to prevent the loss of these additional school fees, the establishment of private migrant schools has often been strongly discouraged.

Limited educational access is also at play when trying to gain access to colleges and universities. Competition for acceptance to local universities is fierce even if students are legal. Non-registered students are often required to achieve significantly higher test results compared to registered students when vying for the same place. By limiting labor mobility, China’s amplifies the income disparity between urban and rural residents, creating a hereditary economic barrier.

Chinese Diaspora

Chinese Diaspora or Overseas Chinese are people of Chinese birth or Chinese descent currently living outside the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of China (Taiwan). Today there are an estimated 40 million overseas Chinese living in 148 countries around the world. The majority lives in Southeast Asia. Ethnic Chinese constitute approximately 74% of the Singaporean population as well as significant minority populations in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam.  Historically, most came from the southern coastal provinces of Guangdong, Fujian and Hainan. In each geographical region where Chinese reside, many of the Chinese diaspora have kept their languages and cultural identity while integrating to varying degrees into their host country.

Map of Chinese Migration 1800-1949

Map of Chinese Migration 1800-1949

Chinese migration came in four waves. According to research by Poston and Wong, the first wave was characterized by merchants and traders who emigrated to create businesses abroad. The more successful their businesses, the more likely these migrants were to preserve their Chinese attributes and their connections with China. Most of these merchant migrants traveled to Asian countries, particularly to Southeast Asia before 1850. A second wave of migration occurred between approximately 1840 and 1920 when Chinese immigrated to the Americas and Australia to work as cooks, miners, laundry men and railway construction workers. Most of these immigrants were male, of peasant origin and many returned to China after working for years or decades in their host country.

Chinese emigration to America: sketch on board the steam-ship Alaska, bound for San Francisco

A third wave of migration occurred for several decades after the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1911 and was characterized by well educated professionals. Between 1920 and 1950, many of these immigrants were teachers who traveled to Southeast Asia to educate the Chinese children of families who had emigrated previously. A fourth wave of migration occurred after 1950 when Chinese in countries such as South Asia migrated to other foreign countries.

Since 1979, approximately 4.5 million Chinese students have traveled to the United States and other Western countries to seek university education. As China’s footprint in the world expands, educational destinations have expanded with it. Overall, according to UNESCO, in 2016 over 801,000 Chinese students pursued university education overseas. A significant minority of these students have elected to remain in their host countries at least for some period after graduation. For instance, the US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education noted that 92% of Chinese who earned science and technology doctorates in the United States in 2002 still resided in the US in 2007. Similarly, a 2013 National Science Foundation report noted that 86% Chinese science and engineering doctorate students hoped to remain in the United States after finishing their degrees. China has tried to reverse this educational brain drain by offering subsidies and perks for student returnees. Their efforts are beginning to show effects. The rate of return of overseas Chinese rose from a low of 25% in 2005 to 33% in 2010.

In 2000, the immigration rate of China’s highly educated population is now five times as high as the country’s overall rate. It is not just wealthy and middle-class students that are traveling abroad. Increasingly, middle-class and wealthy Chinese elites are increasingly pursuing work opportunities overseas or applying for immigrant investor visas where residency is offered to wealthy foreigners in exchange for a specified sum to be invested in the host country. In 2014, for instance, Chinese citizens received 85% of all U.S. immigrant investor visas. Wealthy Chinese cite several reasons for their wish to immigrate including the wish to join previously emigrated family members, pollution, poor food safety, weak rule of law and concerns about long-term political, economic and social conditions in China.

Chinese Diaspora and Economic Advantage in Southeast Asia

China’s emigration legacy has created immense economic advantage in many of the Southeast Asian countries.  Except for Singapore, ethnic Chinese represent minority populations in Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Brunei, but dominate the economic activity of their host countries. It is estimated that Chinese migrants control approximately 60% of the region’s private corporate wealth.

 

Chinese in Southeast Asia
Ethnic  
Ethnic Ethnic Chinese %  
Host Chinese in Chinese % Control  
Host Country   Population 2011 Country 2011 Total (1) GDP Host (2)  
Indonesia         248,000,000        8,010,720 3% 71%
Thailand           64,260,000        7,512,600 12% 81%
Malaysia           28,730,000        6,540,800 23% 63%
Singapore (3)             5,260,000        2,808,300 76% 96%
Philippines           95,830,000      12,413,160 13% 62%
Myanmar/Burma           62,420,000        1,053,750 2% 76%
Vietnam           89,320,000            992,600 1% 41%
Laos             6,560,000            176,490 3% 99%
Cambodia           14,430,000            147,020 1% 92%
Brunei                410,000              51,000 12% 24%
(1) Research by Poston and Wong: The Chinese Diaspora: The Current distribution of the overseas Chinese
(2) The economist later replicated by many sites
(3) % Ethnic Chinese calculated as % of Singaporean citizens not total Singapore population

 

 

 

Southeast Asia

Source: The economist

Activating the Chinese Diaspora

Since the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1911, overseas Chinese have played an important in both the politics and economics of China. For instance, much of the funding for the 1911 Chinese revolution was donated by Chinese living abroad.  After 1980, when China began undertaking economic reform, the People’s Republic of China actively recruited the assistance of its overseas population both in terms of skills and capital. More recently, China has worked to maintain the allegiance of recently emigrated Chinese, especially those professionals and students working and studying in foreign countries. Xi Jinping believes that the Chinese diaspora can play a significant role in helping China to reclaim its status as a premier nation both economically and politically. Overseas Chinese are some of the world’s most educated and successful professionals and entrepreneurs. With estimated total liquid assets of $1.5-2 trillion, the Chinese diaspora holds a substantial capital as well as expertise and relationships to be tapped for the continuing economic growth of the mainland. Additionally, it is estimated that the Chinese diaspora returns approximately $50 billion annually to China in terms of remittances.

In order to capture their expertise, Xi Jinping has launched a range of policies designed to encourage their continued engagement with the country. Such policies include the creation of over 200 Confucian institutes globally which have encouraged overseas Chinese to connect with their language, culture, homeland and each other. China has also been successful at encouraging ethnic Chinese to return to China to startup companies. Incentives proffered include the provision of free real estate or office space in high-tech parks, preferential tax treatment, preferential access to banking and credit, venture fund matching and streamlined regulatory processes. As an indicator of effectiveness of such policies, Greater Pacific Capital estimated that 25% of all tech startups in China are founded by returnees as opposed to home-grown entrepreneurs.

China has also worked to more effectively connect with the Chinese diaspora who intend to remain in their host countries. Programs include connecting overseas Chinese in academia and the science and technology sectors with their mainland Chinese counterparts as well as providing funding for their endeavors. Confucian Institutes help Chinese stay in touch with their language and culture while transmitting traditional Chinese culture and values around the world. Government web portals such as China Scholar Abroad and China Diaspora Web link ethnic Chinese with the mainland. The Chinese government has also hired top brand consultants and policy strategies to improve its international image and to advance policy agenda worldwide.

Additionally, China is also working at keeping it Chinese diaspora on message and sympathetic to China’s domestic and international policy objectives by creating a Chinese digital space where its points of view can be articulated. To this effect, China has acquired the control of newspapers, television stations and radio stations targeted toward the Chinese diaspora; it has used its economic clout to influence the reporting of independent media that have business ties with China; it has acquired both broadcast time and advertising space from existing independent media; and it has encourage ethnic Chinese to work in foreign media outlets in order to influence their reporting from within. Often, it has softened its messaging by placing its national goals under the banner of ethnic unity and common ethnic interests.

Trends

  • A declining workforce will necessitate China to shift from a low-wage, labor-intensive model to a one where resources are used more efficiently, where there are increases in labor productivity, and where automation and robotics technologies help offset labor declines. There will also be pressure to increase the retirement age.
  • The change from the One Child Policy to the Two Child Policy will result in only a small increase in China’s population.Significant socioeconomic changes that have occurred since the onset of the One-Child Policy have caused China to transform into a low fertility culture. These changes are consistent with the pattern countries follow as they become more developed.
  • Going forward, China’s large population will continue to provide the country with enormous challenges. As its population continues to age, China will be challenged by slower GDP growth and the need to create pension and healthcare systems that will help relieve the burden of the young to care for the old. Additionally, China’s growing population, which is predicted to peak by 2035 at approximately 1.461 billion people, will continue to put enormous demands on its scarce natural resources. Water management, in particular, will be a huge future challenge.
  • The challenges of China’s rapid urbanization are significant. Rapid economic growth will be necessary not only to the finance the enormous cost of this level of urbanization, but also to ensure that when centralized, urban populations do not protest government policy, as they did in Tiananmen Square in 1989. This could be a particular risk if long term migrant workers continue to be denied the same basic rights as registered urban residents, particularly as those urban residents will become an increasingly smaller percentage of the total urban population. Continuing to favor the original urbanites with government services risks long-term disadvantaging a large section of the population.
  • Additionally, urban residents use, on average, 3.6 times as much energy as rural residents, creating greater demands on energy grids. Urbanization can also lead to greater motorization, taxing China’s new road infrastructure. Greater urbanization will also generate higher levels of pollution, further exacerbating China’s already polluted air.
  • More changes in the household registration system, which identifies a person as a resident of a specific region—the so-called hukou reform—could accelerate the move of workers from rural areas to cities and help reduce the country’s growing inequality. HuKou reform will continue to proceed gradually, with second tier and smaller cities seeing reform while large metropolises such as Beijing and Shanghai keeping residence restrictions firmly in place. In the near term, urban hukouresidents will continue to get better ranking jobs, better wages, and benefits.
  • China’s diaspora will continue to see growth in the coming decades. Part of this growth will be driven by university students continuing to remain in their host countries after graduation and part of the growth will be driven by wealthy and skilled professionals leaving China to seek better work opportunities and a better quality of life. Additionally, as China continues to build infrastructure globally, some Chinese migrants that have worked on the infrastructure projects will seek to remain in their host countries. For instance, it is estimated that approximately one million Chinese have emigrated to Africa since 2001. These immigrants have come both via state projects and via their own initiative.
  • China will continue to activate its diaspora to achieve its domestic and foreign policy objectives. China views its diaspora as a source of capital and expertise. It also views it as a way to influence host countries from within.

References

How China is Tackling its Water Challenge

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Introduction

TheChinaFile

China faces a severe water shortage. Its current water per capita is one quarter of the world average. This per capita water availability will decrease in the coming decades as China’s population peaks at between 1.4 and 1.5 billion people by 2030. China’s water usage per capita may be low by international standards, but it is expected to grow by between 40 and 50% by 2030. Factors such as higher living standards, increasing urbanization and further industrialization are driving water demand.

The water that China does have is often badly polluted. An estimated 70% of China’s rivers and lakes are currently contaminated and 300 million people drink water tainted with inorganic pollutants such as arsenic, excessive fluoride, untreated factory wastewater, agricultural chemicals, leaching landfill waste, and human sewage. China’s water is also inefficiently consumed, compounding its water challenges. 45% of water destined for agricultural use is lost before it even reaches crops. Only 40% of its industrially used water is recycled, compared with 75% to 85% in developed countries and water lost from urban plumbing leaks accounts for 18% of total urban water withdrawals.

Moreover, China’s water is unequally distributed throughout the country. The Yangtze River basin and areas to the south receive 80% of China’s naturally available water resources to support only 54% of its population, 35% of its arable land, and 55% of its GDP, while the north gets just 20% of China’s water. Deforestation, overgrazing and unsustainable agriculture have destroyed local ecology in many parts of China, affecting China’s overall rainfall, and exacerbating China’s age-old challenges of drought and flooding. To meet its growing water demands, especially in the north, China is depleting its underground aquifers, lakes and river systems at untenable rates. As water becomes scarcer, competition for water is increasing between agriculture and industry as well as among China’s growing cities and different regions of the country. This trend will only continue in the coming years; by 2009, surveys revealed that 58.3% of river water, 49.7% of lakes, 79.5% of reservoirs and 38.7% of wells were of quality necessary to be deemed adequate water sources. China remains particularly opaque and is reticent about releasing regular and up-to-date water statistics.

China has tried to solve its flooding, drought, and water scarcity problems through hydro-engineering projects such as the Three Gorges Dam and the South-North Water Diversion Project. Yet hydro-engineering alone will be unable to create sufficient water supplies to meet China’s future demand. China will need to improve the management of its water resources and the legislation governing its use. Perhaps most importantly, Beijing will need to increase the price of water to better reflect its scarcity value, allowing for the economic restructuring that this higher cost will cause. Repairing China’s ecology will also be essential. A healthy ecology will not only aid the prevention of desertification, with all the water loss that such environmental damage causes, but it will also help to maintain upstream eco-systems, which are essential for the long-term supply of good water sources. China will also need to upgrade the efficiency of its water delivery systems to agriculture and to its cities, and to improve the efficiency utilization rates in industry. Environmental protection will be essential in ensuring the water that China does have is potable. China must clarify its environmental protection laws, improve enforcement and increase fines. Without implementation of such measures, water scarcity risks limiting China’s future economic growth. Water scarcity could also challenge China’s political and social stability. Increasing illness caused by polluted water is driving up healthcare costs and generating more internal dissent. In 2005, the Chinese government acknowledged that 50,000 environmentally related “mass incidents” (a euphemism for protests) occurred, many of which were sparked by water degradation.

Interestingly, the Chinese Committee of Political and Legislative Affairs also acknowledged about the same amount of “mass incidents” (about 50,000) in 2013 as they did nearly a decade ago. The reality, however, is that environmental mass incidents have been steadily increasing: from 1996 to 2011, environmental protests increased at an average rate of 29% per year, spiking up nearly 120% in 2011 alone. The scale of the protests is also increasing, with around half of all “mass incidents” involving 10,000 or more people.

The South-North Water Diversion Project

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Historically, China has sought to solve its water scarcity problems through reliance on large infrastructure projects. Indeed, many of China’s top leaders are trained engineers, including Hu Jintao, who is a trained hydraulic engineer. Mao Zedong is reputed to have said in 1952, “the south has a lot of water, the north little. If possible, it is okay to lend a little water”, apparently acting as the spur for building what is now called the the South-North Water Diversion Project. When completed in 2050, the $62 billion mega-aqueduct is projected to divert 44.8 billion m³ of water yearly from the Yangtze to the north. The project will follow three routes. The eastern route will transfer 14.8 billion cubic meters of water yearly from the lower Yangtze, via the ancient 1800 km Hangzhou to Beijing canal, to Jiangsu, Anhui, Shandong and Hebei provinces as well as to the city of Tianjin. It is now projected to be completed in 2013 or 2014. The central route, begun in December 2003, will divert 13 billion m³ of water from the Danjiangkou reservoir on the Han River (a Yangtze tributary) to Beijing, Tianjin and other cities. It is scheduled to be completed in 2014. The western route would transfer water from the upper reaches of the Yangtze tributaries across the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau through the earthquake prone Kunlun Mountains via a network of tunnels into northwest China. Given its technical difficulty, the western route has not yet been given official approval and it is possible that it will be quietly shelved. It is expected that as many as 400,000 people might be displaced by the projects overall, though this would be fewer if the western route were scrapped.

Overall, the South-North Water Diversion Project faces many logistical challenges, the most important of which is ensuring that the water that does reach the north is sufficiently pollution-free to be usable. The eastern route, for instance, crosses 53 heavily polluted river sections. Clean-up efforts and water treatment facilities on this route alone will account for about 40% of the total aqueduct cost. If effectively implemented, it will be one of the most comprehensive water clean-up operations ever seen. 379 pollution control projects including wastewater treatment plants and wastewater recycling facilities are slated to be constructed, and major sources of industrial pollution such as paper mills are being shut down. Nevertheless, the clean-up process continues to be challenging.

Water Desalinization

China is also investing heavily in water desalinization in order to increase its water supplies. Research into water desalinization began in 1958 and more than 20 seawater desalination projects have been constructed which currently desalinate 600,000 m³ of water a day. China aims to produce as much as 3 million m³ of desalinated water daily by 2020, mainly for use in the north of the country. Desalination, however, is expensive and energy-intensive, and also requires water for its production. For these reasons, it cannot be considered to be a serious solution to China’s water shortages.

In 2012, the Chinese government outlined their policy goals for the next three years, ending at the conclusion of 2015. The government hopes to reach 2.2 to 2.6 million cubic meters or water per day, a far cry from the 660,000 cubic meters currently produced per day in China, but still possible given that plans exist to bring another 1.4 million cubic meters of water production online in large-scale desalination plants.

As of 2014, China had expanded its efforts in water desalinization with a total of 75 desalination plants, with nine more under construction. Though this technology may not be the most efficient at providing coastal cities with drinking water, these plants supply water that is used in coastal factories, sewage, and other wastewater management solutions, thereby allowing more drinking water from lakes, rivers, and reservoirs to be directed towards individual use. In the last decade alone, 60 desalination plants were built to run on seawater reverse-osmosis technology, producing 348,000 cubic meters of water per day, and an additional 11 plants were designed to utilize low temperature multi-effect distillation and produce a further 222,300 cubic meters per day.

Water Management

Ultimately, China will need to tackle its water scarcity issues not just by generating more supply, but by more efficiently managing and using its existing water resources. China’s water resource management system is highly fragmented. Multiple institutions have responsibility for China’s water resources, including data and information collection, hydro-infrastructure construction, environmental protection, and agricultural, urban and industrial development. There are frequent overlaps between these departments which raise administrative costs and exacerbate water’s “Tragedy of the Commons” problem. In other words, while China recognizes nationally the need for clean, well-managed water, it is in the interest of each user locally to consume water in whatever way will maximize their own short-term economic gain. This frequently gives China’s water management agencies conflicting priorities. Regional governments, for instance, often sacrifice water quality to protect local industries and jobs; they tend to focus on the water within their administrative areas, while failing to look at China’s water needs as a whole. Those considering water use in agriculture are often focused on accessing the water necessary to maintain agricultural yields. Those looking at the environmental protection of river basins try to limit the water drained from the river eco-systems. A failure to address the problem in a joined-up way persists.

This individualistic approach to the water supply in China, combined with local government corruption, has led to large-scale industrial dumping into lakes, rivers, and other aquifers. Often these waste products are, or are in large part, made up of heavy metals like cadmium or chromium that have been linked to increased risk of cancer. A recent scandal in 2011 involved the Lüliang Chemical Industry Company, which was found to be storing 288,400 tons of untreated chromium byproducts only a few feet from the Nanpan River, whose waters flow west and eventually join with those of the Pearl River. The company had been disposing of waste in this manner since 1989, and had gone as far as hiring divers to secretly dump metal into mountain reservoirs in order to reduce metal treatment and detoxification costs. Chromium levels in the river were 2,000 times China’s legally permissible standards. Effective progress in water management remains relatively slow due to ongoing and pervasive corruption that still sways local officials.

Water Legislation and Enforcement

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Not only are water governing authorities fragmented, but laws governing the management of China’s water resources are still being developed. Historically, China’s water laws have been ambiguous and lacking in effective enforcement mechanisms. They have had a bias toward decentralization, with local government agencies often having a determinative voice in water issues within their region. This has resulted in widely varying levels of water-law enforcement, corruption and confusing standards for industries. Indeed, some water legislation reformers have been advocating greater centralized regulation. They point to the success of centralized management in helping to restore at least some perennial flow in the Yellow River delta. In the late 1990s, its downstream flow disappeared annually for over 200 days, because upstream provinces were drawing on the river too heavily. Beijing began limiting water allocations to each of the provinces, so downstream provinces had sufficient water. Today, the entire length of the Yellow River is monitored in real-time by data collection from dozens of monitoring stations along the length of the river. The system is designed to check and manage pollution, drought and flood control, while enforcing fair distribution of scarce water resources among the nine provinces that share the waterway. Engineers can regulate the river’s flow by opening or closing a network of automated sluice gates and monitoring devices. This system is currently undergoing an upgrade which will make it the most advanced water rationing system in the world by the time of completion which is expected to be around 2015.

Indeed, recent water legislation stresses a greater move toward a unified management of water resources. This legislation emphasizes the importance of a balance between water resources, the still-growing population, economic development and the environment. It also focuses on improved efficiency in water use and it strives to set a foundation for greater transparency, equity and efficiency in the access of and payment for water by all levels of the economic spectrum. It advocates that allocation, distribution and regulation of water resources should be increasingly made through water-drawing permit systems where users are allocated and charged for water according to sector quotas, taking into account annual water-availability conditions and the sustainability of river basins, lakes and groundwater. The legislation also attempts to make clear distinctions as to who is responsible for the quality of water in each of China’s regions and to ensure that each of those responsible works to minimize pollution and improve overall water quality. To achieve improved water quality, recent legislation also specifies the need for setting up data and information systems at all levels, and to make data gathered available to stakeholders. Indeed, in 2007, Beijing’s Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs launched its online water database, allowing public access to water quality and pollution data, including corporate regulatory breaches. Yet, this move toward better information access has been tempered by Beijing’s conflicting and simultaneous instinct to prevent the independent gathering of information on China’s water, especially regarding its trans-boundary rivers, ostensibly to safeguard China’s national security.

The 2008 Law of the People’s Republic of China on Prevention and Control of Water Pollution ties the performance evaluation of public officials, at least in part, to their meeting of water and environmental targets. It also increased monetary sanctions against enterprises discharging wastewater illegally and specified the amount of chemical oxygen depletion caused by agricultural run-off allowed in waterways. In a significant legal development, it also allowed, for the first time, class action suits to be brought against polluters.

Several decisions made at the Third Plenum also show a greater commitment in dealing with corruption in local and village governments. Officials in environmentally damaged areas will no longer be expected to meet the same GDP targets as those in other provinces, and local government actions will be monitored in an attempt to reduce the prevalence of companies bribing towns to look the other way as they pollute rivers and water sources that ultimately make their way into China’s largest rivers.

Water Pricing, Water Rights and Efficiency

Ultimately, the most important step in solving China’s water scarcity will be raising the price of water. Water is highly subsidized by the central government, often making it effectively almost free for users, creating no incentive to save water. In 2009, the average price of water per cubic meter was $3.01 in Germany, $2.37 in the UK, $1.02 in South Africa and Canada, $0.74 in the US and $0.31 in China. Of 19 major economies, only India had cheaper water tariffs. Five years later, the price of water per cubic meter rose to $3.18 in Germany, $2.41 in the UK, $2.05 in Canada, $1.46 in the US, and $0.38 in China. Prices do not seem to be ending their upward trend anytime soon.

Higher water prices are likely to generate a significant restructuring in China’s economy. Higher water prices will encourage farmers to plant crops that are less water-intensive and will encourage more efficient irrigation. Indeed, growing urban and industrial water demands may eventually lead to the elimination of winter wheat in northern China as the higher cost of water forces the shift to higher-valued uses that produce more jobs and income per water unit. Currently, 1000 tons of water produce 1 ton of wheat worth $200, whereas industry yields $14,000 of economic output for the same amount of water. Reducing China’s grain production would reflect a significant shift in the decades-old policy of 95% self-reliant grain production, and would have a real impact on global grain markets. It would also spur urbanization as farmers migrate to cities in search of new employment.

Higher water prices would also encourage factories to recycle more of their water. In the special case of the North China Plain, it is likely to check the overexpansion of some high water consuming industries. Currently the region produces 20% of China’s steel, 10% of its power, and 14% of its paper, all industries which use water heavily and cause severe pollution. This would also make the cost of water treatment more feasible as it would become more economical to process and recycle water than to dump it untreated into the rivers. Higher water costs would also make living in water-scarce cities more expensive, potentially discouraging immigration into these areas. It would foster improved efficiency of its water delivery systems to agriculture and to cities.

Such a move may also check pressure on Beijing to tap new coal supplies, particularly the enormous coal reserves in the dry north. Without further water transfer schemes, such as the controversial – and possibly unachievable – western route of the South-North Water Diversion Project, there will not be enough water to mine the northern coal reserves and still develop the modern cities and manufacturing centers that China envisages for the region. The fresh water needed for mining, processing, and consuming coal accounts for the largest share of China’s industrial water use, over a fifth of all the water consumed nationally.

Higher water prices will also help control the scale of the South-North Diversion Scheme, serving to minimize the impact on the Yangtze River. Having the cost of the scheme added into the price of water for end-users will encourage them to use the water more sparingly. Ma Jun has estimated that the cost of cleaning up the northern Huai River system and of running its industry sustainably was greater than the total annual value in production that the industry within the Huai River system generated. Economic progress has brought more people to the river valleys, so that the area now supports 1.5 times the national average. After 1949, mainly for flood control, 5100 large and small-scale reservoirs were constructed along the upper reaches of the Huai waterway and more than 10 major flood control retention reservoirs were built. Without the huge hydro-engineering in the Huai River Basin, the area would not have been able to sustain so many people. Rapid development, however, made previous hydro-engineering projects inadequate. Beijing responded by building new hydro-projects to expand water supplies further. In what has become a vicious cycle, Beijing now faces the need to divert water from the southern Yangtze to support the people and the economy in the area. Ultimately, China’s desire for development is infinite, but its water resources are finite. Unless water pricing reflects its true scarcity value sooner rather than later, China’s lack of water will put the brakes on its rapid economic development.

Enforceable water rights will also be important to reducing China’s overall water wastage. Currently, even with the recent legislation, it is still not clear who holds many water rights and what benefits these rights provide. Ideally, China needs to establish a nationwide water rights program, leaving enough clean water so its eco-systems and aquifers are sustainable. Permits should be issued to each water user, with pricing at a level which encourages increased water productivity. Creating a market to sell or lease these water rights will advance water productivity further. Those who do more to protect the river and other water basins should have greater rights. This includes those provinces and regions near the waters’ sources. The provinces could then profit by selling rights, instead of wasting water on parched land and inefficient industrial projects. Appropriate incentives for water saving technologies and behaviors also need to be developed. For instance, a tariff system could be implemented in which people pay higher bills when they consume more than a set quota.

Authorities have been slow to raise water prices because of their fears about how the higher costs will affect China’s poor. Recent research has shown, however, that lower income Chinese often get little benefit from subsidies as, ultimately, low water costs mean that they frequently receive water that is highly polluted. Nevertheless, the government remains concerned with inflation, always a hot issue in China, and this adds to the pressure to maintain low water prices despite the arguments in favor of raising them; it is unlikely that the poorest in society would welcome a price increase even if it were in their own long-term benefit in terms of improving the quality of their water supply.

Pollution

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Despite China’s efforts over the last three decades, water pollution has spread from the coastal to inland areas and from the surface to underground water resources. Essential to controlling China’s water pollution is the strengthening of law enforcement to improve compliance by industries and other polluters. Overall compliance with China’s environmental laws remains low. Yet, strengthening environmental protection is a multi-faceted process which not only requires raising water prices and establishing clearer water rights, but also necessitates the continued development of water protection legislation, the further advancement of China’s judicial system, greater financing and staffing of China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP), and making public a more rigorous collection and analysis of water data. Economic incentives such as pollution levies and fines have to be rigorously enforced. Overall, pollution fines should be increased. Lawsuits should be initiated against polluters and those most hurt by damaged public goods such as river basin ecosystems should have greater rights to demand compensation. State subsidies could be given to small towns and villages to help them to construct adequate water treatment facilities. Those waste-water treatment facilities that are constructed need to be continually monitored to ensure they remain operational and in compliance. China’s Tenth Five-Year Plan (2001–2005) mandated, for instance, the construction of thousands of new waste water treatment plants, yet a 2006 survey by SEPA (the State Environmental Protection Agency, the forerunner of the MEP) revealed that half of the new plants actually built were either not operating or were operating improperly. Corruption will also need to be tackled. Lax environmental codes are often rarely enforced and easily avoided by bribing officials. Tackling corruption will likely be done most effectively by linking compensation and performance figures to environmental protection as well as economic achievement. This would make it in the personal interests of officials to perform in the environmental arena, mitigating the “Tragedy of the Commons” conundrum, though this would also represent a significant shift in government behavior.

Future Trends

China’s water challenges are becoming too big for Beijing to ignore. China’s Twelfth Five Year Plan (2011-2015) projects record levels of water use, rising to 620 billion m³ by 2015, up from 599 billion m³ in 2010. Its traditional response to growing water demand – building large hydro-engineering projects in order to increase supply – will no longer be sufficient to meet the water demands of China’s agriculture, industry and cities in the coming decades. As a result, China will begin to implement new policies in order to better manage its water resources and to reach its 2015 goals of cutting water consumption per unit of value added industrial output by 30%, reducing arsenic, lead, cadmium, chromium and mercury levels by 15% from 2007 discharges, reducing ammonia nitrate fertilizer runoff by 10% and its corresponding chemical oxygen depletion by 8%. The plan also targets the construction of water conservation structures, improved irrigation, and commits to investing in the clean-up of rivers and lakes through the construction of wastewater treatment and recycling pipes.

At the heart of these new policies will be the gradual raising of the price of water throughout China. This trend is already in evidence in many cities across the country. Shanghai, for instance, increased residential water prices 25% in 2009, and another 22% in 2010. Beijing raised the price of commercially used water by 50% in 2010 and expects to raise its water charges to residential users by 24% in stages by 2013. China’s water users have not accepted the rises without discontent and some government officials fear that higher water prices could lead to social unrest, particularly as China is concurrently struggling with inflation. This unrest is due both to poor public education about the extent of China’s water challenges and to public skepticism that higher costs will translate into more effective water management.

Fixing the quality of China’s water will also be a growing priority for Beijing in the future. China needs to improve its water pollution record both by government investment and by encouraging private investment in the water treatment and management sectors. In 2011, for instance, China allocated $606 billion to clean up water and water infrastructure over the next decade. Larger, wealthier cities had already started investing in the water treatment sector, but without government support, smaller cities and rural areas have lacked the means and incentives to make much-needed investments.

Beijing is also explicitly encouraging foreign participation in China’s water markets. Foreign firms invested about $1.7 billion in China’s water sector between 2004 and 2009, with over $500 million being spent in 2009 alone. The investments were in waste-water treatment, municipal and industrial water supply sectors, and in direct investments in China’s water companies. This involvement will continue to expand in the near future.

China will also begin to move more aggressively against significant water polluters. In 2007, maximum fines to individuals or companies who discharge highly toxic pollutants into drinking water resources were raised fivefold to 500,000 RMB (approximately $80,000). Fines for companies who dump industrial residue urban waste into drinking water resources or who store solid waste or other pollutants below the water lines along rivers and reservoirs increased 20-fold to 200,000 RMB (around $32,000). While these are significant increases the fines remain relatively low and there is room for an expansion in this area. Increasingly, enterprises will also be responsible for bearing all costs to contain water pollution accidents and may face fines as high as 30% of the direct economic loss, according to the severity of the incident. Historically, pollution levies have been so low that it has been cheaper to pay penalties rather than to treat discharge. There is a growing realization that this cannot continue.

Litigation against water polluters will also increase, with rulings to progressively penalize those fouling China’s water systems. In 2009, for instance, an Asian Development Bank study determined the number of environmental lawsuits filed in China has increased an average of 25% annually since 1988. Since 2009, the Supreme People’s Court has been encouraging China’s maritime courts to adjudicate water pollution cases brought on behalf of a public interests. Additionally, three specialized environmental courts have been established in the provinces of Guizhou, Jiangsu and Yunnan.

China’s water challenges are daunting and urgent. The array of measures that are needed to more effectively manage its resources is huge. Still, China’s leadership is well aware of the importance of water to continued economic growth and to the health and well-being of its people. Poor water management has toppled many a Chinese government throughout the millennia, a risk to which the CCP is not immune. While progress toward solving China’s water challenges is likely to be uneven, overall it is expected that China’s water management will improve on most fronts over the next five to ten years.