The water level of the Yangtze River and Jialing River in Chongqing, China, on August 17, 2022. (Photo by Costfoto / NurPhoto via Getty Images)

China has less water per person than almost any other place in the world—and the water it has is extremely polluted and located hundreds of miles from its prime agricultural areas. The nation cannot meet its clean water needs or feed its population, so it has chosen to move water from what should be a global commons in the Himalayas to its own people. These and other destructive policies now imperil billions of lives.

Read Thomas J. Duesterberg’s latest Hudson policy memo to learn how the United States and its allies can push back on China’s exploitative ambition.

Key Insights

1. Prohibitive costs and focus on autonomy preclude a comprehensive focus on remediation in China.

Although China has begun to address the accumulated problems of environmental degradation in the last decade, Beijing lacks the financial resources or political will to remedy these problems properly in any timely manner. Xi Jinping, in response to both the damage these problems cause for the Chinese economy and the growing public frustration with the response’s inadequacy, has begun to talk of “ecological civilization” as a guiding principle of his leadership. Yet other developments contradict this commitment to prioritize sustainability over economic growth. Specifically, the People’s Republic of China recently returned to rapidly building coal-fired power plants, and Xi has quietly dropped his pledge to achieve net-zero emissions by 2060. In a country reeling from a real estate implosion, stock market collapse, and high youth unemployment, the inability to address severe ecological problems only adds to the difficulties that Xi and the PRC leadership now face and that undermine popular support.

2. China is exporting environmental degradation.

Because China has destroyed more than one-quarter of its forests under Communist rule, it imports a significant amount of wood to maintain its industrial growth. The PRC also has huge and growing needs to import grain and mineral resources. A principal motive for the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is to gain access to such resources, especially in the developing world. Importing these resources frequently has the secondary effect of harming the global environment. Despite its rhetoric in bilateral and multilateral climate negotiations and high-profile global meetings at Davos and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) venues, China has not been a responsible partner in the global project to adopt sustainable environmental practices. There is consequently ample opportunity for the US and its allies to call out Chinese practices, develop coalitions to incentivize more responsible Chinese behavior, and offer alternatives to developing countries to work with the West on more sustainable practices.

3. China is exploiting the global water commons.

The Lowy Institute estimates that 80–90 percent of groundwater in China is now unsuitable for drinking, and 50 percent is too polluted even for agricultural use. Because of this, China is unable to feed its own people. China believes that the vast waters of Tibet, southern China, and the Hindu-Kush areas in its western reaches should be considered “sovereign resources” rather than basic resources to be shared with neighboring countries downstream. The economies of Southeast Asia, which depend on these waters for their traditional agriculture and aquaculture, have already experienced severe impacts and disruption from Chinese hydroelectric and water control projects. China refuses to participate in the Mekong River Commission—which Thailand, Vietnam, and Laos formed in the 1950s—to share good practices and organize equitable sharing of the vast water resources of the Mekong and other rivers flowing into Southeast Asia. The commission has evolved into an effective partnership among downstream nations. But it is hamstrung by a lack of Chinese willingness to share data and plans to utilize the water and power from the headwaters of the major rivers flowing south from the Tibetan Plateau and Yunnan. China has also built dozens of dams in the western Himalayan valleys to provide electric power and use the waters that flow into the three biggest rivers of northern India—the Indus, Ganges, and Brahmaputra—for its own people.

Quotes may be edited for clarity and length. 

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