South-to-North Water Transfer Project

22-1-25 South-North Water Transfer: deficits; threats to life; 2.5X 3GD - Insight > .

"The Three Gorges Dam and the South-to-North Water Transfer Project are two of the Chinese Communist Party's major operational water resource projects. The construction of the Three Gorges Dam sparked heated debates among Chinese scholars in the 1980s and 1990s, but in 2000, the South-to-North Water Transfer Project, which is 2.5 times larger than the Three Gorges Project, was launched amidst a wave of silence. In fact, it’s an illusion created by the Chinese government. Even before the project is completed, it has shown that its potential damages are even worse than those of the Three Gorges Project."

The South–North Water Transfer Project, also translated as the South-to-North Water Diversion Project (pinyin: Nánshuǐ Běidiào Gōngchéng; lit. 'Project of diverting water in the South to the North') is a multi-decade infrastructure mega-project in China. Ultimately it aims to channel 44.8 billion cubic meters of fresh water annually from the Yangtze River in southern China to the more arid and industrialized north through three canal systems:

• The Eastern Route through the course of the Grand Canal;
• The Central Route from the upper reaches of Han River (a tributary of Yangtze River) via the Grand Aqueduct to Beijing and Tianjin;
• The Western Route which goes from three tributaries of Yangtze River near the Bayankala Mountain to provinces like Qinghai, Gansu, Shaanxi, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia and Ningxia.

Mao Zedong discussed the idea for a mass engineering project as an answer to China's water problems as early as 1952. He reportedly said, "there's plenty of water in the south, not much water in the north. If at all possible; borrowing some water would be good." The complete project was expected to cost $62 billion – more than twice as much as the Three Gorges Dam. By 2014, more than $79 billion had been spent, making it one of the most ambitious and expensive engineering projects in human history.