China's water shortage to peak by 2030
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2005-06-08 14:45

Water shortage in China is expected to reach the climax in 2030, when the country, with the population estimated at 1.6 billion, would have a per-capita share of water resource of 1,760 cubic meters, according to the Ministry of Construction.

This will make China one of the countries in the world suffering a medium-level shortage of water resource according to the standard of the United Nations, said Vice Minister Qiu Baoxing in Beijing Tuesday.

In general, China's current water resource is relatively low, 2,200 cubic meters per person on average, and the country supports 21 percent of the world's population with 7 percent of the world's water resource, Qiu said.

The distribution of water resource in China is imbalanced. The northern part of the country, with six percent of the country's total water resource, supports one third of the population.

The per-capita water resource of Tianjin, in North China, is only one 10,000th of that of Tibet.

The growing water pollution adds difficulties to water supply in China, according to the official. In China, 200 billion tons of waste water is discharged into rivers annually, causing pollution of varying degrees to 90 percent of rivers in the country.

The official also warned the danger of excessive exploitation of underground water, which results in subsidence of land in many cities, Qiu said and cited Beijing as an example, saying the capital city has sustained a land subsidence of nearly one meter a year since the early 1950s.

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