Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
This is the toxic centre of China's coal-producing heartland. It's an
apocalyptic vision of clanking factories, spewing smokestacks, burning
flames, suffocating fumes, slag heaps, constant haze and relentless
dust
...
On a winter morning, the smog is so thick that a visitor can barely see
100 metres ahead. Buildings disappear into the haze. The Buddhas in
the ancient temples are black with coal dust. Even the sun is barely vis-
ible in the darkened sky. Linfen is a ghost city, inhabited by people who
loom out of the smog like spectral presences. (York 2009)
Few foreigners venture to live in Linfen, and of course not all Chi-
nese cities are quite this bad in terms of environmental quality. Still,
visitors to China must remember that China is an environmentally
degraded and dangerous country and should take appropriate precau-
tions before and during travel there.
B. Water
China has approximately the same amount of freshwater resources
as Canada, but well over 40 times Canada's population. Put another
way, China has about 7 percent of the world's freshwater resources
butover20percentofitspopulation.Wateristhusaveryscarce
resource in China, with annual per capital availability at only
one-fourth of the global average. The once-mighty Yellow River, which
historically was feared because of its periodic catastrophic floods on
the North China Plain, often does not even flow to the Yellow Sea
anymore because its waters are all utilized by agriculture and indus-
try. (In 1997, for example, the river did not flow into the sea for 7
out of 12 months.) The Wei River, once a major geographical feature
in Shaanxi province, is now little more than a muddy creek. Two-
thirds of China's demand for water is met by groundwater, but
overutilization of groundwater has led to saltwater intrusion and land
subsidence. Aquifers and water tables beneath Chinese cities, espe-
cially in the north, are being drained at catastrophically unsustainable
rates. In a memorable 2007 story in the New York Times about China's
looming water crisis, Jim Yardley vividly describes the problem in
the following terms:
Hundreds of feet below ground, the primary water source for this
provincial capital of more than two million people [Shijiazhuang, Hebei
province] is steadily running dry. The underground water table is
sinking about four feet a year. Municipal wells have already drained
two-thirds of the local groundwater.
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