In Nanshui beidiao gongcheng, "Beijing is building a modern marvel, this century’s equivalent of the Panama Canal.
"China is one of the most water-rich countries in the world. But as Mao observed, its water resources are unevenly distributed and overwhelmingly concentrated in the south and far west. Water scarcity has always been a problem for northern China, but shortages have reached crisis levels as a result of rapid economic development.
"Rather than face the political challenge of allocating water resources among these competing interests, Beijing has placed its faith in monumental feats of engineering to slake the north’s growing thirst. * * * [But] Beijing cannot keep increasing supplies of water indefinitely. * * * In order to make difficult decisions about who gets how much water, the country needs robust, transparent and participatory decision-making mechanisms.