The South–North Water Transfer Project: remaking the geography of China

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe South–North Water Transfer Project: remaking the geography of China. Regional Studies. This paper uses a technopolitical approach to analyse China’s South–North Water Transfer Project. The project promises to channel 25 billion cubic metres of water a year from the Yangtze River northward, connecting four river basins, three megacities, six provinces and hundreds of millions of water users. The paper argues that the project embodies a particular, engineering-heavy approach to water management; that, even so, it poses fundamental challenges to existing regional structures of governance; and that it promises continuing detrimental environmental impacts in source regions even as it invites similar future interventions in China’s hydrological environment.