China have a huge population, thus there are lots to be done to make sure that the resources are evenly distributed and used by all of the people in the population. However, China’s fresh water are unevenly distributed.

The southern river systems contain 80% of fresh water in China and yet only half of China’s population have access to it. In the northern part of Yangtze, 43% of China’s population have access to only 14% of China’s freshwater.

Other than lacking the access of fresh water, due to its problem of overpopulation, China faces another problem – polluted waters.

Paired with rapid economic growth and lax environmental oversight, a rapidly increasing population had led to the deterioration of drinking water quality.

As quoted from an article on China’s eco-crisis: 60% of underground water polluted,

China’s Ministry of Land and Resources has been monitoring at least 4,778 areas in 203 Chinese cities in 2013, the official Xinhua news agency said. According an annual report unveiled by the ministry, in at least 43.9 percent of the monitored sites the underground water was ranked as “relatively poor” and in 15.7 percent of cases as “very poor.” This means that about 59.6 percent of underground water can’t be used directly for drinking.

Polluted waters in China. Photograph by AFP Photo / Peter Parks

Large amount of waste produced by the large population led to huge amount of waste to be disposed of. Unfortunately, water bodies are the main area where wastes are being discharged into.

There had been various incidences of water pollution in China. One of such incidences happened in the city of Lanzhou. Due to industrial contamination, water supply was switched off in one district and citizens could only consume crates of water that they had stocked up as cancer-causing benzene was found in the water supply by Veolia Water, the water supplier for the city. Benzene from the soil went into the water and contaminated it.

This is just one of the incidences that is representative of the water pollution problem plaguing China. Seven million people are drinking contaminated water everyday. Also, as industries are still growing in the country, more and more pollutants are being released into the land, air and water bodies. As there are concentrated levels of sulfur in the air due to discharge by coal powered plants, when rain falls, it will results in acid rain. The acid rain will fall into the water bodies, which in turn will pollute the water in China more.

Another issue faced by China is the mere depletion of water supplies.

Photograph: Stringer Shanghai/Reuters

As rivers are msotly running through the southern part of China, most of the parts of the country are depending on underground wells and aquifers. However, aquifers and underground supplies are running out and water levels are running critically low.

China was also warned by groundwater experts to reduce food production due to the critical situation of their fresh waters now. Ground water quality is suffering due to high demand, high rate of water transfer and pollution. 60% of the demand came from the irrigation of intensive agriculture in the North China Plain. The intensive agriculture was due to high food demand from the population in the country. This issue was brought up when Zheng Chunmiao, director of the Water Research Centre at Peking University, studied the acquifiers under North China Plain, where the wheat in China are mainly produced, and he found that the water table is rapidly due to agriculture. This is alarming as water table is an indicator is the abundance of groundwater and it also determines the volume of the rivers nearby. If the water table falls below the river bed, the river will run dry. 

Sources:

What are the challenges of meeting the resource needs of a very large population? 

China: Subsistence Farming and the Implications of Environmental Degradation

China’s eco-crisis: 60% of underground water polluted

China told to reduce food production or face ‘dire’ water levels