Resource information
China has an ancient tradition of
hydraulic engineering but in the past half century the
intensity of exploitation of water resources has accelerated
as a result of population and economic growth. The three
major issues for Chinese water management are water
shortages, flood control and pollution. The World Commission
on Dams noted that since 1949 the number of large dams in
China had increased from 22 to 22,000, almost half the
global total. China has over 80,000 reservoirs and 240,000
km of dikes. Most rivers and streams are now used for
irrigation, power generation, transport, urban water supply
or waste disposal, some for all of these purposes. The main
constraints to integration of Water Resource Management, or
WRM arise from the interaction of fairly objective needs for
new institutions, incentives and procedures, on the one
hand, and bureaucratic interests and political resistance to
demand management on the other. China s water problems are
not unique, involving a balancing act between economic
growth and resource depletion, protection of the
environment, health and other non-economic objectives,
mediated by strong governments at both central and federal
(provincial levels). This paper focuses on the role that the
World Bank operations have played in changing WRM policy and
strategy during the 1990s.
