May I ask, do you have any supporting evidence for your assertion that China has already raised the Northern water table "sufficiently"?
Second, when you say "Beijing's track record is so good", are you suggesting that the planned economy system is better than market-based systems? If so how do you account for the collapsing investment yield for infrastructure? George Magnus and Stewart have both written at length about the inefficiencies of the planned system and its impact on China's growth. It would be good to read your rebuttal of their work.
3. As China is a partner of the MRC, and the MRC countries are all very much in China's influence orbit (as our extensive research has shown), I'm not sure the MRC are the best arbiters of what really happened in 2019. Do you have any evidence that the 2019 drought was caused by normal weather patterns, and wasn't anything to do with the 11 upstream dams built by China?
As for the actual topic of the article, the family members we have in Wuhan are very much panicked by this. There's been no stress on Wuhan's water supply in living memory if not well before; this is the very heart of China's "Land-o-Lakes."
Historically the problem has been management of excess water, as you and your guests note. Wuhan was, if not the first, at least one of the first "Sponge City" pilots for implementing re-greening and natural stormwater management systems. When I was first there with my wife, several centimeters of rain in a day were enough to inundate wide swathes of the city in a few inches of standing water, which was no longer the case by 2018 or so.
But they're woefully unprepared for what's coming "down the pipeline", so to speak, if this year's weather patterns become more common. This crisis is easily an order of magnitude worse than that along the Colorado in the SW United States or what Britain faced until the rains this past week. Yet there's limited reporting, very limited policy discussion, no debate, no publicly available planning, limited emphasis on conservation, and few or none of the institutions that have performed turnarounds in other locales.
For instance, the Mississippi and Missouri are widely acknowledged to be well-governed, the Great Lakes have had a massive environmental renaissance since 1970, and the NYT's recent profile of the Yakima in Eastern Washington was a good look at how to fix these problems. All of those processes and the institutions that underpin them are public and open. They're not quick, but they're pluralist, informed by science, protective of the public interest, and ultimately implacable. When plans are finalized they have broad support and are well-funded, so they're durable and work long-term.
Whereas whatever planning is taking place on how to better govern water use and protect the remaining clean ground and surface freshwater resources is doing so behind closed doors in CCP internal committees, and no one has any idea what it looks like or whose needs it will meet. When it's pushed out, it's an open question how much support it will have, how far it will go in tackling the underlying problem, and how long it will last before it needs to be replaced yet again.
This is a pattern we see repeated across China's system of governance *constantly*. The internal workings, promotion paths, KPIs, and politicking within the CCP incentivize leadership at every level to conceal or downplay problems until they've moved on from a given post. Local governments lie to counties, and when the latter discover the problem they help lie to the provinces, and so on... until you have situations like the banking crisis in Henan this year, the air pollution ("fog") in Beijing in the early 2010's, the ongoing degradation in public support for Dynamic Zero COVID as lockdowns spiral and domestic vaccine development splutters, local and region public protests... all over problems that, with better, more transparent, more accountable governance... never would have existed at any scale in the first place!
Sure, once the problems burst out from their hiding places and into the public view the Party has little choice but to move forcefully to address them, and often meets with success. This is the advantage of an authoritarian system. But many problems are not amenable to being solved with this pattern.
For instance, air pollution ends when you turn off the sources, as Beijing's current air quality can attest to. Water and soil pollution do not, just ask NE American cities how much of their soil is still contaminated with lead, even though we outlawed lead additives in combustion fuels 50 years ago. Ending the Hukou would be easy; cleaning up from the second-class citizenship imposed on two-thirds of the populace will not be. The US is still dealing with the economic fallout from redlining and underinvesting in minority-plurality urban centers. The demographic cliff imposed by the One Child policy will be far harder to manage than the gradual decline faced by Japan, South Korea, or Taiwan, and pro-natalist policy isn't going to do much of anything.
The folks who think the Party's brash authoritarianism is actually technocracy sitting atop transparent grassroots democracy are deluding themselves; if the Party turns out to be the future, it'll only be after the US and EU shatter due to their own democratic deficits and the higher expectations of their citizenry, not due to any innate superiority in governance.
1. "China has made some significant investments to try to reroute water from South China to North China”. In fact, China has already rerouted sufficient water from South China to North China to raise the Northern water table significantly. The South-North transfer is 2/3 complete, with work underway on the final leg.
2. "a system that still much more ‘command and control’-based than some of the market-based approaches that we're used to in Western Europe or in the United States”. It looks like that to us because we're unaware that China's 'system,' is cooperative pursuit of pre-agreed goals, like poverty elimination. Beijing's track record is so good that it only has to point the way and provide funding.
3. "There is a whole series of dams on the upper reaches of the river in China, where you no longer see the normal seasonal flood patterns because they have been withholding water among other things to facilitate power generation”. There are, indeed, a whole series of dams on the upper reaches of the [Mekong] river in China, near whose banks I reside. But despite Western NGOs' allegations, there are no examples of the normal seasonal flood patterns being disrupted by withholding water to facilitate power generation. Just ask the Mekong intergovernmental riparian council.
Thanks as ever Godfree for your comments.
May I ask, do you have any supporting evidence for your assertion that China has already raised the Northern water table "sufficiently"?
Second, when you say "Beijing's track record is so good", are you suggesting that the planned economy system is better than market-based systems? If so how do you account for the collapsing investment yield for infrastructure? George Magnus and Stewart have both written at length about the inefficiencies of the planned system and its impact on China's growth. It would be good to read your rebuttal of their work.
3. As China is a partner of the MRC, and the MRC countries are all very much in China's influence orbit (as our extensive research has shown), I'm not sure the MRC are the best arbiters of what really happened in 2019. Do you have any evidence that the 2019 drought was caused by normal weather patterns, and wasn't anything to do with the 11 upstream dams built by China?
As for the actual topic of the article, the family members we have in Wuhan are very much panicked by this. There's been no stress on Wuhan's water supply in living memory if not well before; this is the very heart of China's "Land-o-Lakes."
Historically the problem has been management of excess water, as you and your guests note. Wuhan was, if not the first, at least one of the first "Sponge City" pilots for implementing re-greening and natural stormwater management systems. When I was first there with my wife, several centimeters of rain in a day were enough to inundate wide swathes of the city in a few inches of standing water, which was no longer the case by 2018 or so.
But they're woefully unprepared for what's coming "down the pipeline", so to speak, if this year's weather patterns become more common. This crisis is easily an order of magnitude worse than that along the Colorado in the SW United States or what Britain faced until the rains this past week. Yet there's limited reporting, very limited policy discussion, no debate, no publicly available planning, limited emphasis on conservation, and few or none of the institutions that have performed turnarounds in other locales.
For instance, the Mississippi and Missouri are widely acknowledged to be well-governed, the Great Lakes have had a massive environmental renaissance since 1970, and the NYT's recent profile of the Yakima in Eastern Washington was a good look at how to fix these problems. All of those processes and the institutions that underpin them are public and open. They're not quick, but they're pluralist, informed by science, protective of the public interest, and ultimately implacable. When plans are finalized they have broad support and are well-funded, so they're durable and work long-term.
Whereas whatever planning is taking place on how to better govern water use and protect the remaining clean ground and surface freshwater resources is doing so behind closed doors in CCP internal committees, and no one has any idea what it looks like or whose needs it will meet. When it's pushed out, it's an open question how much support it will have, how far it will go in tackling the underlying problem, and how long it will last before it needs to be replaced yet again.
This is a pattern we see repeated across China's system of governance *constantly*. The internal workings, promotion paths, KPIs, and politicking within the CCP incentivize leadership at every level to conceal or downplay problems until they've moved on from a given post. Local governments lie to counties, and when the latter discover the problem they help lie to the provinces, and so on... until you have situations like the banking crisis in Henan this year, the air pollution ("fog") in Beijing in the early 2010's, the ongoing degradation in public support for Dynamic Zero COVID as lockdowns spiral and domestic vaccine development splutters, local and region public protests... all over problems that, with better, more transparent, more accountable governance... never would have existed at any scale in the first place!
Sure, once the problems burst out from their hiding places and into the public view the Party has little choice but to move forcefully to address them, and often meets with success. This is the advantage of an authoritarian system. But many problems are not amenable to being solved with this pattern.
For instance, air pollution ends when you turn off the sources, as Beijing's current air quality can attest to. Water and soil pollution do not, just ask NE American cities how much of their soil is still contaminated with lead, even though we outlawed lead additives in combustion fuels 50 years ago. Ending the Hukou would be easy; cleaning up from the second-class citizenship imposed on two-thirds of the populace will not be. The US is still dealing with the economic fallout from redlining and underinvesting in minority-plurality urban centers. The demographic cliff imposed by the One Child policy will be far harder to manage than the gradual decline faced by Japan, South Korea, or Taiwan, and pro-natalist policy isn't going to do much of anything.
The folks who think the Party's brash authoritarianism is actually technocracy sitting atop transparent grassroots democracy are deluding themselves; if the Party turns out to be the future, it'll only be after the US and EU shatter due to their own democratic deficits and the higher expectations of their citizenry, not due to any innate superiority in governance.
Great conversation, and very helpful.
Three niggles:
1. "China has made some significant investments to try to reroute water from South China to North China”. In fact, China has already rerouted sufficient water from South China to North China to raise the Northern water table significantly. The South-North transfer is 2/3 complete, with work underway on the final leg.
2. "a system that still much more ‘command and control’-based than some of the market-based approaches that we're used to in Western Europe or in the United States”. It looks like that to us because we're unaware that China's 'system,' is cooperative pursuit of pre-agreed goals, like poverty elimination. Beijing's track record is so good that it only has to point the way and provide funding.
3. "There is a whole series of dams on the upper reaches of the river in China, where you no longer see the normal seasonal flood patterns because they have been withholding water among other things to facilitate power generation”. There are, indeed, a whole series of dams on the upper reaches of the [Mekong] river in China, near whose banks I reside. But despite Western NGOs' allegations, there are no examples of the normal seasonal flood patterns being disrupted by withholding water to facilitate power generation. Just ask the Mekong intergovernmental riparian council.