China From Red to Green quotes Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto on China’s water supply:
For most Americans, it is unimaginable that the great Mississippi River would one day dry up and not reach the ocean. Yet between 1974 and 2000, China’s Yellow River….ran dry 18 times. In 1998, the Yellow River failed to reach the ocean mouth for more than 250 days. With 1.3 billion people to feed, such water shortages are not just a major agricultural problem but a serious threat to China’s economic and political stability.