Basically, there is a huge problem of water scarcity in China. Too many people and not enough water to go around.

In Beijing alone, 20 million people possess only one tenth of the world’s average water resource per capita. With droughts occurring yearly for the past decade, the supply of water from reservoirs, rivers and lakes has fallen severely, with the consumption of water much faster than it can be replenished, resulting in a shortage of water for any purposes at all.