I'm reading my way (backwards, of course) through the most excellent NYT series on the environment in China, and of everything I learned along the way, this fact from Part II most defintiely stood out:
China’s disadvantage, compared with the United States, is that it has a smaller water supply yet almost five times as many people. China has about 7 percent of the world’s water resources and roughly 20 percent of its population. It also has a severe regional water imbalance, with about four-fifths of the water supply in the south.
I've long understood that the crazy growth rates in China might one day lead to serious political instability in the country, but for some reason I never really quite got just how serious their problems are until I saw this stat. Life depends on water. More demand than supply is problem enough, but when there are problems of geographical imbalance too, well....
Eventually they are going to be forced to make hard choices. Hard choices produce winners and losers. How will the losers handle things? Stay tuned...
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