The drought in southwestern China has attracted much attention lately. Almost every year, the Chinese government lists investment in construction projects for hydraulic facilities used by farmlands as one of its major policies. In reality, however, they have been unsuccessful in effectively carrying out this policy.
Massive hydraulic construction projects still receive government financing, but over the last 30 years, there have been almost no upgrades to small reservoirs and irrigation canals in rural areas. Of the 4 trillion yuan (US$585.9 billion) the Chinese government invested in its domestic economy last year, only an extremely small portion was spent on hydraulic facilities for farmlands. This is directly responsible for rural areas’ inability to fight drought.
The huge sums of money invested by the Chinese government are basically aimed at things that can bring direct economic gain to local governments. A lot of these investments have in fact been disastrous for the environment and for ecological conservation.
For example, the rubber industry in Yunnan Province has always been one of the province’s main industries. From 1994 to 2007, the purchase price of unvulcanized rubber skyrocketed by 900 percent. However, tests from official geographic information systems have also shown that big rubber plantations have affected the climate in Yunnan, causing the average temperature in the region to increase by 0.4°C to 0.5°C over the last 10 years.
Furthermore, mass planting of eucalyptus trees is something that has started in China as the pulp and papermaking industries have developed. The People’s Government of Yunnan Province, in particular, has assisted companies in the paper industry to build up massive stocks of timber and these companies have acquired large areas of land, including mountain and forest areas.
In just a few years, 12.14 million hectares of eucalyptus trees and other fast-growing trees replaced the original natural forests and alpine vegetation. These large areas of eucalyptus trees have been called “green deserts” because there are no birds in the trees and no vegetation beneath them.
The negative effects on the environment of these plantations are being compared to that of massive hydropower development projects.
In other words, the aggressive economic development strategies of local governments are one of the main reasons why natural disasters are becoming more and more prevalent.
There is an even more serious problem behind these economic development strategies and that is the unequal distribution of water resources. In China, cities and industries receive more water resources than agricultural areas and farmers. When serious droughts last for months on end, it is the villages and peasants that are hurt the most.
The reason behind this situation is the unequal distribution of power and rights. In addition, farmers, including those who are affected by droughts, have no way of organizing groups to fight for their rights and are unable to make their demands known via regular channels.
This is a form of manmade disaster and it is something that the Chinese government is trying very hard to ignore and avoid taking responsibility for. This is a growing issue that we cannot afford to ignore any longer.
Wang Dan is a prominent figure in China’s democracy movement and holds a PhD in history from Harvard University.
TRANSLATED BY DREW CAMERON
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) trip to China provides a pertinent reminder of why Taiwanese protested so vociferously against attempts to force through the cross-strait service trade agreement in 2014 and why, since Ma’s presidential election win in 2012, they have not voted in another Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate. While the nation narrowly avoided tragedy — the treaty would have put Taiwan on the path toward the demobilization of its democracy, which Courtney Donovan Smith wrote about in the Taipei Times in “With the Sunflower movement Taiwan dodged a bullet” — Ma’s political swansong in China, which included fawning dithyrambs