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https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/chinas-growing-water-crisis

China's Water Crisis Could Trigger Global Catastrophe

China's water crisis is nothing new, but it's gotten worse - and is
now on the 'brink of catastrophe' and could trigger a global
catastrophe, according to Foreign Affairs.
Dried-up riverbed of Jialing river, a Yangtze tributary, China, August 2022
Thomas Peter / Reuters

    Given the country’s overriding importance to the global economy,
potential water-driven disruptions beginning in China would rapidly
reverberate through food, energy, and materials markets around the
world and create economic and political turbulence for years to come.
-Foreign Affairs

For starters, there's no substitute for water - which is essential for
food production, electricity generation and sustaining all life on
earth.

In China, which consumes ten billion barrels of water per day
(approximately 700x its daily oil consumption), decades of economic
and population growth have pushed northern China's water system to
unsustainable levels.

According to the report, the per-capita water supply around the North
China Plain at the end of 2020 was nearly 50% below the UN's
definition of acute water scarcity at 253 cubic meters. Other major
cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, are at similar (or
lower) levels.

For comparison, Egypt had per-capita freshwater resources of 570 cubic
meters, and has nowhere near as large of a manufacturing base as
China.

Not fit for human consumption

Also worrisome, is that 19% of China's surface water is not fit for
human consumption according to China’s Ministry of Ecology and
Environment. Roughly 7% was deemed unfit for any use at all.

Groundwater was worse - with around 30% considered unfit for
consumption, and 16% unfit for any use.

In order to utilize this water, Beijing will need to make major
investments in treatment infrastructure, which will require a
significant increase in electricity usage in order to power the
equipment.

Working against progress is China's farming and industrial industries,
which dump contaminants into the country's groundwater - potentially
setting the stage for decades of additional impairments.

    Data from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization indicate that
China uses nearly two and a half times as much fertilizer and four
times as much pesticide as the United States does despite having 25
percent less arable land.

    For decades, Beijing has generally chosen to conceal the full
extent of China’s environmental problems to limit potential public
backlash and to avoid questions about the competence and capacity of
the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). This lack of transparency suggests
that an escalation to acute water distress could be far closer than
most outside observers realize—increasing the chances that the world
will be ill prepared for such a calamity. -Foreign Affairs

The core problem is the overpumping of aquifers under the Northern
China Plain - which according to NASA GRACE satellites, are more
overdrawn than those of the Ogallala Aquifer under the Great Plains in
the US - which is one of the world's most imperiled sources of
agricultural water.

In some instances, groundwater levels have gotten so low that
underground aquifers have collapsed - triggering a phenomenon called
Land Subsidence, which can cause the ground to cave in over large
areas, which in some case renders the aquifer unusable in the future.

In 2003, Beijing launched a $60 billion "South-to-North Water Transfer
Project" to use waters from the Yangtze River to replenish the north.

Meanwhile, China has deployed cloud seeding technologies to lace the
clouds with silver iodide or liquid nitrogen in order to stimulate
rainfall. It's also relocated heavy industries away from dry regions.

In April 2022, Vice Minister of Water Resources Wei Shanzhong
estimated that China could end up spending $100 billion annually on
water-related projects.

It might not be enough, however.

    Despite highly innovative programs to improve water availability,
some scholars estimate that water supply could fall short of demand by
25 percent by 2030—a situation that would by definition force major
adjustments in society. Experiences to date on the North China Plain
enhance concern and illustrate the scale of additional needed
hydraulic intervention. Despite nearly a decade of importing Yangtze
valley water supplies to high-stress areas such as Beijing,
large-scale depletion of stored groundwater continues in other nearby
areas, such as Hebei and Tianjin. -Foreign Affairs

The result of a worsening drought will, of course, mean less food.

60% of China's wheat, 45% of its corn, 35% of its cotton and 64% of
its peanuts come from the at-risk North China Plain - where, in the
example of wheat, their annual production of more than 80 million tons
is on par with Russia's annual output, while their 125 million tons of
corn is nearly 3x Ukraine's prewar production.

In order to sustain these harvests, water is being pumped to farms
faster than nature can replenish it. According to satellite data,
between 2003 and 2010, Northern China lost as much groundwater as
Beijing consumes annually - leaving farmers struggling to find new
sources.

If the North China Plain suffers a 33% crop loss due to water
insufficiency, China would need to import roughly 20% of the world's
internationally traded corn and 13% of the world's wheat.

    Although China has stockpiled the world’s largest grain reserves,
the country is not immune to a multiyear yield shortfall. This would
likely force China’s food traders, including large state-owned
enterprises such as COFCO and Sinograin, into global markets on an
emergency basis to secure additional supplies. This in turn could
trigger food price spikes in high-income countries, while rendering
key food items economically inaccessible to hundreds of millions of
people in poorer countries. The impacts of this water-driven food
shortage could be far worse than the food-related unrest that swept
across lower- and middle-income countries in 2007 and 2008 and would
drive migration and exacerbate political polarization already present
in Europe and the United States. -Foreign Affairs

A shocking problem

China's water woes go beyond agriculture - with around 90% of the
country's electrical grid reliant on extensive water resources -
"particularly hydro, coal, and even nuclear generation, which needs
large and steady water supplies for steam condensers and to cool
reactor cores and used fuel rods" according to the report.

If China lost 15% of its hydropower production in any given year due
to low water levels, it would have to increase electricity output via
other means by an amount equal to what Egypt consumes in a year -
something that only coal would be able to accomplish.

Except - the process of mining and preparing coal is also highly water
intensive. And while seawater can be used to cool the limited coastal
coal sources, much of the sooty resource is located inland and rely on
groundwater, rivers and lakes.

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