- Cannon and rocket-launchers still protect Beijing from
their vantage point in the Fragrant Hills, just as the Great Wall nearby
has done for centuries.
-
- But they are aimed not at the Mongols, or more recent
enemies such as the Americans or Russians. They are pointing up into the
clouds and their foe is thirst.
-
- The Fragrant Hills gun emplacement is part of China's
ever-more desperate quest to counter its chronic water shortage. Whenever
the sky clouds over, the guns fire shells containing a chemical, silver
iodide, that is supposed to precipitate rainfall.
-
- China has the largest rain-seeding programme in the world,
with two military aircraft, 30 cannon and 20 rocket-launchers dedicated
to the task around Beijing alone.
-
- The capital's efforts are dwarfed by those of arid north-western
regions but most provinces have some capability to seed rain. Liquid nitrogen
is also used, sprayed direct from planes into the clouds, in the belief
it will trigger rain on to the reservoirs beneath.
-
- Nevertheless, there is no certainty that rain-seeding
works, says Zhang Qiang, the deputy head of the Beijing artificial climate
office.
-
- "It's very hard to quantify how much rain falls
because of the seeding, and how much is natural," she said.
-
- Moreover, even if the procedure works, it can be criticised
as stealing other people's water. Miss Zhang acknowledges that there have
been "questions" from South Korea across the Yellow Sea.
-
- All the same, China's destruction of its environment,
and in particular its water, is so devastating that the country has no
option but to continue such outlandish experiments.
-
- Others include building huge dams such as the Three Gorges,
submerging some of China's most famous beauty spots and in many cases preventing
water reaching countries downstream.
-
- It is also building a £35 billion diversion scheme,
to funnel water north from the Yangtze.
-
- Sheng Huaren, the vice-chairman of parliament, underlined
the scale of the problem yesterday by admitting that 300 million people
lacked a safe water supply.
-
- The figure is especially huge given the excessive rain
that flooded the Yangtze and Pearl valleys last month.
-
- Mr Sheng said 90 per cent of the river water that flowed
through China's cities was heavily polluted.
-
- Earlier, Qiu Baoxing, the vice-construction minister,
said that total water resources per person would decline by almost a fifth
by 2030.
-
- He also acknowledged that China was staggeringly wasteful.
-
- For every unit of its gross domestic product, it uses
five times as much water as the world average. State-owned companies, which
still dominate heavy industry and squander cheap natural resources, are
primarily to blame for such wastage.
-
- But another explanation for the water shortage can be
seen not far from the Fragrant Hills at the Pine Valley Golf Resort. On
the dusty edge of the North China plain, Pine Valley is China's most expensive
club with a membership fee of $150,000 (£83,000).
-
- The Jack Nicklaus-designed course inevitably features
lakes and water traps. But the clubhouse is also set in an entirely artificial
landscape fed by sprinklers, ornamental ponds, waterfalls and fountains.
-
- In its desire to be seen as a progressive country after
years of Maoism, China is focusing on creating a middle class.
-
- So the inhabitants of rising cities such as Beijing and
Shanghai receive preferential treatment in education, health care - and
water supply.
-
- Luxuries such as golf are symbolic of the business class's
rise. Beijing has 19 courses, despite only a tiny number of players.
-
- The government stopped work on seven more last year,
in an admission that things had gone too far.
-
- Pine Valley has only 400 members, but they include leaders
of private and state-owned industry as well as the political nomenclatura.
-
- The contrast with the polluted water available to the
poor is increasingly a major cause of unrest.
-
- Two villages in Zhejiang province are in the hands of
rioting residents, who have driven out police and closed down factories
they blame for poisoning the water supply.
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- © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2005.
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- http://telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/0
7/01/wcloud01.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/07/01/ixworld.html
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