China's water redistribution challenges and policy solutions

Policy Recommendations to Alleviate Water Shortages in China
China faces a major water shortage currently and this issue must be resolved in the coming years or the twelve Northern provinces that have very little water, scarce amounts of water or no water at all will cease to be able to harbor life. The problem is not that China lacks water as a country. The problem is that 80% of its water supply is in the south, which leaves very little for the north where 41% of the nation’s population lives. Moreover, the Northern provinces account for 38% of China’s agriculture, 46% of its industry, and approximately half of the country’s power generation (Parton, 2018). Water is needed for all this. And while the 2,000 cubic meters per person of water that China has are well above the level of water stress (which begins at 1,700 cubic meters per person, followed by scarcity level at 1,000 cubic meters per person and acute water scarcity at 500 cubic meters), the country does not have in place a solution to solve the growing water demand and the increasing water shortage in the north (Parton, 2018). This paper will discuss this issue, describe its legal, economic and ecological implications, identify any national constitution protections that the country must abide by, assess relevant UN Environmental Treaties, analyze whether China has committed violations of its obligations, national law or international law, and conclude with a recommendation for what government officials, citizens and international actors should do in light of these findings.
China’s Water Shortages
As Cheng, Hu and Zhao (2009) point out, China suffers simply from having too much water in the wrong place and not enough in the right place. For example, the North China Plain holds a third of China’s population but has access to only 7.7% of the nation’s water supply. During China’s monsoon season, water scarcity in the north can turn into flooding and crop devastation (Cheng et al., 2009). Moreover, much of the water that is available for use in public consumption and agriculture (such as groundwater, river water, reservoir water and lake water) is contaminated. Pollution is so bad in China that even in the south, where water is abundant there are water shortages because the water supply there is contaminated as well (Cheng et al., 2009).
In 2014, China finished the South-to-North Water Diversion (SNWD) project, which is the largest inter-basin water transfer system in the world with the ability to move 25 billion cubic meters of fresh water from the Yangtze River some 1000 miles in two directions to the north, intersecting cities, provinces, river basins and hundreds of millions of both water users and water polluters (Barnett, Rogers, Webber, Finlayson & Wang, 2015). However, to finish the project, China spent more than $80 billion and displaced hundreds of thousands—and there has been a negative environmental toll as well, with pollution rising and maintenance causing ecological disruptions. The project has been largely misguided as well, as Barnett et al. (2015) point out: there is no need for such a large transfer of water because the water that is in the north could be sufficient if only there were adequate pollution measures in place and a better irrigation infrastructure.
Legal, Economic and Ecological Implications
China has many environmental laws—such as the Water Pollution Prevention and Control Law and the Environmental Protection Tax Law of China, both of which were passed in 2018—but as Barnett et al. (2015) points out, the problem is not legal per se. The problem is that there is no real separation between business and state in China. The government is the main source of business and when the government is responsible for both environmental oversight and for generating business—i.e., entrepreneurship—there is a serious conflict of interest and what ends up happening is just the sort of thing that the SNWD has become: a behemoth and monstrosity of waste and inefficiency that pumped tens of billions of dollars into the local economy but that actually did nothing to solve the problem of water shortage in the north. So long as pollution remains an issue, the problem of having too little clean water will persist—no matter how much new water is transferred from one place to another. All that transfer and the maintenance required to support it has huge ecological ramifications that only serve to make matters worse. Instead of addressing the ecological aspects of the issue (which would not nearly stimulate the economy and China’s so-called “growth” as building the world’s largest water transference system would), China has seen the problem as an opportunity to generate construction business.
What is needed is not construction. What is needed is actual adherence to the environmental laws that in place. In fact what is needed is a simple pollution monitoring system and water reclamation system along with an improved irrigation infrastructure—all of which could have been implemented in the north at far, far less cost. For China, however, the economy comes first—and any excuse to build something will do. Environmental laws in China thus just serve as pretext for construction, which serves as pretext for economic growth. China’s ghost cities fall into the same category (Jin et al., 2017).
National Constitution Protections
Article 126 of China’s Constitution states: “The state protects and improves the living environment and the ecological environment, and prevents and controls pollution and other public hazards.” This is the Constitution’s only statement on environmental protection. Since China is an authoritarian country and the state is the supreme arbiter, there is no real mechanism (such as checks and balances like that in the West) to ensure that the State is doing as its Constitutions says it must. In other words, just because the Constitution says the state protects the environment does not mean that there is any real accountability on the matter.
China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection has found that nearly 60% of groundwater that is monitored for safety fails to meet quality standards (Yu & Liu, 2018). Yet, because implementing environmentally safe practices to help clean up pollution would essentially lead to massive layoffs in China’s sprawling industrial sector, the environmental laws that China creates merely pay lip service to the idea of clean water and a better ecological system: in China, the economy is what matters most, and shutting down industrial production out of environmental concern would never be acceptable to the State (Yu & Liu, 2018)—especially since the State is trying to emerge on the World Stage as a leader that can make the New Silk Road a reality and as a leader that can stand up to the West and take the imposition of steep tariffs by the U.S. on the chin.
In other words, China’s national constitution says little on the subject of protecting the environment and the laws that are in place—like the Water Pollution Prevention and Control Law—is only in place to show that West that China cares about the environment. The State is not actually interested in solving these problems. Doing so would require it to contract economically.
Relevant UN Environmental Treaties
Thus, China pays lip service to the Paris Accord but it does not really honor its commitments and that is evident in the fact that the pollution continues and the water shortage crisis in the north persists—in spite of the SNWD. As the UN (2019) states, the Paris Climate Agreement “brings all nations into a common cause to undertake ambitious efforts to combat climate change and adapt to its effects, with enhanced support to assist developing countries to do so.” China is one among many nations to have taken part in the Paris Agreement. Yet China has essentially delegated responsibility for monitoring water pollution to others throughout its massive bureaucracy—to the point that no one really does anything. As Wu et al. (2019) point out, the solution to China’s water issues is quite simple: much of the pollution comes from the nation’s gray water footprint (the result of industrial runoff) and, as such, “water quality issues may be alleviated through recycling and retreatment measures that improve current waste water management strategies” (p. 940). All that needs to be done is for regulators to actually do the job of regulation: “Resource regulators should manage their water resources by matching water demand to water availability or replenishment” (Wu et al., 2019, p. 940). But actually regulating business and abiding by the Paris Agreement would put businesses out of business in China. Thus, violations of treaties, laws (both national and international) are the norm in China. For instance, China signed the Kyoto Protocal in the 1990s-and yet two decades later the same issues are still occurring in China and the country attempts to cover them up through large-scale economic activity.
Violations
China ratified the Paris Agreement (UN Treaty Collection, 2019) but as of yet it has not addressed its water shortage issue by addressing its pollution issues, and it has not addressed its pollution issues because the nation is more concerned with economic issues than with the environment. China has not held itself to the standards evinced in its Constitution, and its Water Pollution Prevention and Control Law is a bureaucratic bandage that is politically applied to make observers believe that the country is cracking down on its environmental issues. Nothing could be further from the truth. In order for China to crack down on its environmental issues, it would have to destroy its industrial sector (by way of actual regulation), and that would undermine China’s position or perceived position on the world stage. China is not held accountable for its failure to enforce environmental law. On the international stage, there is no more real accountability than there is in China. Lip service and political kowtowing to sacred cows is the norm—but beyond that, few countries make a serious attempt to address the issues that they pledge to address because doing so would take a considerable economic toll—and China cannot afford to do that. Improving the regulation would require an autonomous third party that actually holds the country accountable—and in China that is not going to happen.
What Stakeholders Should Do
China must do something, however, because the water shortage issues in the north and in the south are not going to go away. Government officials are beholden to the State and thus know that the top priority of China is to preserve economic growth at all costs. Thus, action is going to have to fall to insurgent leaders, national citizens and international actors willing to put pressure on China’s leaders in order to effect real change.
Insurgent leaders are generally met with repressive force in China, which has a long history of suppressing dissent—from Tiananmen Square in the 1980s to today’s Hong Kong protests.