Reuters
August 1, 2006

China’s quest to master its future through vast engineering feats could test new limits as Beijing prepares a controversial scheme to channel water from Tibet to the parched Yellow River in the country’s west.

Beijing: China’s quest to master its future through vast engineering feats could test new limits as Beijing prepares a controversial scheme to channel water from Tibet to the parched Yellow River in the country’s west.

At 300 kilometres (188 miles) long, the system of tunnels could prove to be one of modern China’s most technically challenging feats and will cost more than the $25 billion Three Gorges dam, officials say.

Yet they say it’s an essential link in a vast system of water transfer projects from China’s relatively abundant rivers in the south to the increasingly parched north and northwest. …

A recent Chinese book, Tibet’s Water Will Save China, details leaders’ enthusiasm for diverting the region’s rivers and has been widely circulated among senior officials, China’s Southern Weekend newspaper reported last week. …

“It epitomizes this assumption that Tibet is the water tower of Asia,” said Tashi Tsering, a Tibetan expert on the region’s resources at the University of British Columbia in Canada.

“Tibet’s water availability is actually quite limited and these rivers depend on glaciers that are receding.”