A province in north China that supplies Beijing with much needed water is itself facing serious shortages of the resource, state media reported ahead of World Water Day yesterday.
Li Qinglin, director of Hebei’s water conservation department, said water shortages had become a big problem for the province’s social and economic development, Xinhua news agency reported late on Saturday.
DWINDLING SUPPLIES
“Water resources in Hebei have dwindled by nearly 50 percent in recent years,” Li said.
Hebei, part of China’s parched northern region, is one of the major suppliers of water to Beijing and Tianjin, which grouped together account for at least 28 million people and are running out of the resource.
China’s rapid economic expansion has helped deplete its water supplies and has long been one of the country’s major concerns.
WATER ECONOMY
Probe International, a leading development policy group, has warned that the city of Beijing faces economic collapse and will need to resettle part of its population in coming decades as it could run out of water in five to 10 years.
Previous Xinhua reports have said that Beijing and surrounding areas, including most of Hebei, have suffered droughts every year since 1999.
Li said that Hebei was consuming approximately 21 billion cubic meters of water annually with only 17 billion cubic meters of surface water, leaving groundwater to supply the rest, Xinhua said.
He urged the government to take steps to reduce water consumption for the sake of sustainable economic and social development.
DIVERSION
China is in the process of building the multi-billion dollar North-South Water Diversion Project to bring water from the nation’s longest river, the Yangtze, to the parched north.
Xinhua has said that by 2010, when much of the north-south water diversion project is to be completed, up to 1 billion cubic meters of water will be diverted to Beijing annually, mostly from the Yangtze.
World Water Day has been held every year on March 22 since 1993.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on Tuesday declared martial law in an unannounced late night address broadcast live on YTN television. Yoon said he had no choice but to resort to such a measure in order to safeguard free and constitutional order, saying opposition parties have taken hostage of the parliamentary process to throw the country into a crisis. "I declare martial law to protect the free Republic of Korea from the threat of North Korean communist forces, to eradicate the despicable pro-North Korean anti-state forces that are plundering the freedom and happiness of our people, and to protect the free
CHAGOS ISLANDS: Recently elected Mauritian Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam told lawmakers that the contents of negotiations are ‘unknown’ to the government Mauritius’ new prime minister ordered an independent review of a deal with the UK involving a strategically important US-UK military base in the Indian Ocean, placing the agreement under fresh scrutiny. Under a pact signed last month, the UK ceded sovereignty of the Chagos archipelago to Mauritius, while retaining control of Diego Garcia — the island where the base is situated. The deal was signed by then-Mauritian prime minister Pravind Jugnauth and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Oct. 3 — a month before elections in Mauritius in which Navin Ramgoolam became premier. “I have asked for an independent review of the
France on Friday showed off to the world the gleaming restored interior of Notre-Dame cathedral, a week before the 850-year-old medieval edifice reopens following painstaking restoration after the devastating 2019 fire. French President Emmanuel Macron conducted an inspection of the restoration, broadcast live on television, saying workers had done the “impossible” by healing a “national wound” after the fire on April 19, 2019. While every effort has been made to remain faithful to the original look of the cathedral, an international team of designers and architects have created a luminous space that has an immediate impact on the visitor. The floor shimmers and
‘VIOLATIONS OF DISCIPLINE’: Miao Hua has come up through the political department in the military and he was already fairly senior before Xi Jinping came to power in 2012 A member of China’s powerful Central Military Commission has been suspended and put under investigation, the Chinese Ministry of National Defense said on Thursday. Miao Hua (苗華) was director of the political work department on the commission, which oversees the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the world’s largest standing military. He was one of five members of the commission in addition to its leader, Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). Ministry spokesman Colonel Wu Qian (吳謙) said Miao is under investigation for “serious violations of discipline,” which usually alludes to corruption. It is the third recent major shakeup for China’s defense establishment. China in June
RSS