Drought around Beijing: water that does not come by itself

The region around China’s capital is one of the driest in the world. In order to supply more than 20 million inhabitants with water, huge canals run from the south to the north of the country. Even that doesn’t solve all the problems.

A woman in her 50s sells eggs and tofu at a small stall in Beijing’s Mentougou district, west of the Chinese capital. The Yongding River flows just behind her stand. The saleswoman grew up here, she says. When she was little, the river had a lot more water: “In the 1980s, there was less water. When I was at school, there was always water in the river. It came from different sources. There was water all year round.”

In the 1990s, the river was then dry: “The fact that there is water in the river again is because water is being diverted from outside to Beijing.” The fact that the river was completely without water at times also has something to do with the coal mines nearby, she explains: “They pump out the water to get to the coal. Then the groundwater level drops.” Beyond the seasons when it rains a lot, the course of the river has been completely dry for a number of years.

Extreme water shortage in the capital

The Chinese capital Beijing with its more than 20 million inhabitants has an enormous water problem. The Chinese water expert Zhang Junfang calculates: If less than 1000 cubic meters of water per person are available in an area, then internationally we speak of water shortages, below 300 cubic meters of extreme water shortages. “In the capital region, only 170 cubic meters of water are available per person. If you include the people who are not registered here, it’s even less than 100 cubic meters,” he says.

What has exacerbated the water shortage in recent decades: The Chinese capital has kept getting bigger – and consumption has increased enormously as a result, explains environmental activist Ma Jun from the non-governmental Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs in Beijing. “The water situation in Beijing was relatively relaxed until the 1950s. Because at that time only about two million people lived in the capital region. Now we have a permanent population of 23 million plus several million homeless workers. The amount of Water available per capita has declined dramatically.”

Water demand is constantly increasing

At the same time, per capita consumption has increased significantly, says Ma Jun – also because of the increasing water consumption by household appliances such as washing machines, by agriculture and by industry. In order to cope with the extreme scarcity, huge amounts of water have been transported in China from the south, where there is more water, to the drier north of the country for years. The water is taken from the Yangtze River and its tributaries and is then diverted via pumping stations and a gigantic network of canals and water pipelines that is constantly being expanded.

“Nearly a billion cubic meters of water is diverted every year,” says Ma Jun. “Some of it evaporates, but it’s still an extremely large amount of water that gets here.” And Beijing isn’t the only one to benefit: several dozen cities get their water from the south to the north through the water transfer project.

In addition to the large volumes of water that evaporate, critics point out the enormous costs of the water diversion project and the damage to the environment. In addition, more than 300,000 people had to be resettled in order to realize the project. “What really hurts me is that when most people open the faucet in Beijing, they don’t realize what’s behind it,” says environmental activist Ma Jun.

Lack of awareness of problem

“In Chinese, tap water is called 自来水, ‘water that comes by itself’. But it’s not that simple,” explains Ma Jun. “Seven out of ten glasses of water come from 1,200 kilometers away. Many people had to make sacrifices for it – especially the people who were resettled. We must not forget that.” That’s why it’s important to consciously save water, he emphasizes.

An approximately 70-year-old man is standing on Yongding in Beijing. He also grew up here. As a child he bathed in the river. At some point that was no longer possible – because of pollution from sewage and the nearby coal mines, he says. “You could drink the water when I was little. Now you can’t. Wastewater is discharged into the river. It used to be much cleaner – the water and the environment in general. Now there are too many people here. It’s complicated become.”

In addition to water shortages, water pollution is also a major problem – not just in Beijing, but throughout China. Ma Jun says the same thing: there is still a lot to be done. But things have also improved in recent years – the Yongding in particular is a good example of this: “Water has been flowing here again for a short time. I haven’t seen that for decades. The water quality is also improving. And you have to acknowledge that,” he says. “In China, a lot has been invested in infrastructure in the past ten years to tackle water pollution.”