THE water in China is unfit for drinking, the Government admitted yesterday, as it announced plans to spend £70 billion over five years on sewage and water treatment facilities.

Qiu Baoxing, the Vice-Minister of Construction and the man in charge of the huge investment programme, said that he used only bottled water to make tea because of the poor quality of tap water in Beijing.

“I can clearly tell you, our country’s water situation is deteriorating overall,” he said. “We are standing at a crossroads.”

The Ministry of Construction said that continuous over-exploitation of ground water had led to a drastic decline of the water table and even the exhaustion of water sources in some areas.

By the end of last year, a total of 278 Chinese cities still had no waste water treatment facilities and pollutants in industrial discharges in those places were often above permitted national standards. About 300 million people living in the countryside drink water tainted by chemicals and other pollutants, the Government said.

Per capita water resources for China’s 1.3 billion people are less than a third of the global average, and falling. This summer one of the most serious droughts in half a century in southwestern Sichuan province has left 18 million people short of drinking water and affected grasslands in Inner Mongolia.

Pollution caused by China’s race to develop its economy is another factor behind the country’s water crisis. More than 70 per cent of Chinese rivers and lakes are polluted, while underground water supplies in 90 per cent of its cities are contaminated.

The Grand Canal, a 12thcentury waterway from south to north China, has been transformed into a stinking channel of black liquid. The Yangtze river, the third-longest in the world, is dying from pollution and could be dead within five years, threatening water supplies to the 20 million residents of Shanghai, which lies at the mouth of the river.

Mr Qiu said that the Government would spend the £70 billion on new sewage works, pipes, desalination plants and projects such as the enormous south-north water diversion scheme, which will take water from the Yangtze to the Huang He [Yellow River]. Ma Jun, an environmental expert, told The Times that the poor treatment of waste water was particularly critical. “

Surface water has become contaminated but people still haven’t paid much attention to the aquifer for the longer term,” he said.

In addition, the ability of the Government to enforce its detailed criteria for water management and pollution control over the next five years was being hampered by the demands of vested interests. Part of the solution was greater transparency and including the public in the decision-making process. Mr Ma said: “The conflict between economic development and environmental protection is real. Some people who have benefited greatly through the development as a result of powerful vested interests don’t want to change the old way of doing things.”

COUNTRY IN CRISIS

460 million urban population in 2000, double that of 1982

278 cities without waste water treatment

90 per cent of underground water supplies in cities contaminated

70 per cent of rivers and lakes are polluted

18 million in 15 provinces short of drinking water because of drought

11 billion litres of bottle water consumed in 2004, the third highest globally

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