Environmental concerns in China: problems, policies, and global implications

International Social Science Review, Spring-Summer, 2006 by Xiaofan Li

(4) WATER: Water has long been the most critical agricultural constituent in China, a country that bears an exceptionally heavy burden to feed its massive population. As a consequence, water pollution has become China's major environmental concern.

Excessive waste and inefficient utilization, serious water shortages in the northern provinces, and continuous dumping of industrial wastes have made China's water pollution problems intractable. The Yangtze River has become China's biggest sewer. There are over 3,000 factories and mines in the reservoir area producing ten billion tons of waste (containing fifty different toxins) annually. Additionally, the loss of forests, which hold rainfall that can replenish soil, causes runoffs that increase the volume of flooding. In 1998, for example, summer flooding along the lower Yangtze River caused 4,000 deaths and over US $36 billion in damages. (11)

China's urban water supply faces numerous problems. More than ninety percent of that water supply is contaminated, and about ten billion cubic meters of tap water is lost annually. Among the 660 large and medium-sized cities in China, over 400 experience various water problems; about one-fourth have reached an alarmingly severe level. Underground sources of water have been increasingly polluted by waste released from cities, twenty percent of which is not processed thoroughly into sanitary substance. (12)

(5) "THREE GORGES DAM" PROJECT: Started in 1994, this project, located on the Yangtze River, will be the largest hydroelectric dam in the world when it is completed in 2014. Its reservoir stretches over 350 miles upstream. Once completed, the dam is expected to tame the intractable waterway and slash China's heavy reliance on coal for energy. The dam's twenty-six turbines are designed to pump out l8,200 megawatts of electricity, the equivalent of almost ten large coal-fired power stations, or the burning of fifty million tons of coal in a single year. (13)

The Three Gorges Dam project has provoked criticism in China and from abroad. Domestic critics argue that the dam's destructive impact on China's environment, culture, historical relics, and human habitats far outweigh its benefits. The World Bank, a major sponsor of the construction of dams in developing countries, refrained from financing the project. (14)

From an environmental perspective, the project will have an irreversible large-scale ecological impact: a large number of species will be affected and some endangered ones could become extinct in the wild, including the Giant Panda, the Chinese Tiger, the Chinese Alligator, the Yangtze Dolphin, the Chinese Sturgeon, and the Siberian Crane. The project also encourages extensive logging, which will induce deforestation. The rate of forest coverage on the upper stream of the Yangtze River has decreased from thirty percent in the 1950s to ten percent in 1998. This has resulted in the loss of valuable topsoil which has increased the volume of flooding. (15) In addition, the dam will slow the flow of water and cause severe sediment formation (which accounts for the river's brownish color). (16) Environmentalists also have expressed concerns that the reduced waterflow between Chongqing and Yichang will weaken the natural self-cleaning process that now flushes sewage into the East China Sea. (17)