Drought Creating Drinking Water Shortage in China

Posted on: Wednesday, 17 March 2010, 10:15 CDT
Southwestern parts of China face a shortage of drinking water due to a rare drought that has dried up rivers and threatens to cripple farms in the Guizhou, Yunnan, and Sichuan provinces, as well as the Guangxi region and the city of Chongqing, the state-controlled Global Times is reporting.
According to information printed in a March 17, 2010 AFP article, the Global Times claims that rainfall in the above regions has been 60-percent below normal over the past six months.
A reported 17 million people in the Guizhou province were experiencing shortages of drinkable water, as 86 of the 88 cities in the region were under drought conditions.

The government is distributing emergency water supplies, according to the AFP story, and the Global Times reports that the drought conditions are the worst the country has faced in at least a century. Attempts to seed clouds and induce rainfall have been unsuccessful, according to Xinhua news agency reports, due to a lack of moisture in the clouds.
"Meteorologists have predicted the situation could worsen in coming months as hot and dry weather was expected to continue and water demand rises as farmers turn soon to their spring planting," writes the AFP.
According to a Bloomberg report posted online at BusinessWeek.com, the drought has benefitted Chinese water supply companies, who witnessed their stocks rise on Wednesday.
"The drought has left people short of water and will benefit water companies because of demand for their resources," Shenyin Wanguo Securities Company economist Li Huiyong told the news service in a phone interview. "It is controllable and hasn’t affected most of the main grain producing provinces."