When does a drought become news? Droughts aren’t like most other kinds of disaster. They don’t usually happen overnight. They’re not like the brief dusting of snow that brought Britain’s quaint transport system to a grinding halt for a day - and then melted as quickly as it came. That was news immediately around the world. We reported it in China. Immediately.
Droughts aren’t like the snow storms that brought China’s transport system to a grinding halt last year and cut off power supplies to provinces the size of countries for weeks. That was international news too - and with greater justification than Britain’s minor brush with disaster inconvenience.
So what about this drought in northern China that finally became news these last few days? It’s supposed to be the worst drought in the region for half a century and it’s suddenly very big news indeed. But, surely, for it to become the worst for 50-odd years, didn’t it have to pass through other “worst since” milestones? Wouldn’t there have been a point when it was the worst for a decade? When did it reach that point? Isn’t something that happens once in a decade news? What about when it became the worst for two decades? Or three? Or four? Who decided that a five-decade record was finally a big enough story to justify reporting it?
Some people might suggest that a problem is only news in China when the government says what a splendid job it’s doing dealing with it. But surely not.
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Or, may be, a situation is only news when the government needs one to distract people from some real problems, or it is a good excuse for some future problems - like starvation.
Interesting observation, not sure why I didn’t see that before. Why not report the worst drought in a decade?
I would venture to guess that regardless of why the government waits until now to share the news, they’ve got to be happy that Premier Wen’s picture is splashed along with it. All Chinese take comfort in any disaster dealt with by Wen Jiabao, or so it seems.
With the desert encroaching on, or actually even in, Northern China, this situation has been seen as a big problem for quite some time and is the background to the current story. Perhaps it is just because of this winter’s extremely low rainfall & its corresponding huge effect on grain. The background situation has certainly received coverage before & has been an issue since the 1950s. The current reports about the drought also follow on from the coverage of the drought in SW China last year (1).
(Northern) China’s use of water is unsustainable (exemplified by the Olympics - 2), but to some extent understandable: according to the Guardian (3) ” Ma Jun, director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs and author of China’s Water Crisis … said the northern half of China had over 40% of the country’s population, more than 50% of the arable land and much industry due to its coal reserves – yet less than 20% of the nation’s water.”
Solutions have been in the pipeline for some time, such as desalination plants (4) or the “network of tunnels and canals from Tibet to supply arid and thirsty regions” (5), perhaps trying to resurrect memories of people harnessing nature e.g. Red Flag Canal in Henan or Chinese imperial grandeur e.g. the Grand Canal. Other countries have been worried about China’s thirst, such as India (6) who feared that China would divert rivers that they rely on. Unfortunately I don’t think much has come of the Economist’s ‘modest proposal’ (7) to increase tariffs despite involving no need to consume babies (8).
1. Drought threatens 1.5 million in southwest China reported in the NZ Herald 27 Feb 2007 http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10426073.
2. Beijing ‘running out of water’ Daily Telegraph 27 Jun 2008
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/2206744/Beijing-running-out-of-water.html.
3. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/feb/04/china-drought-wheat-crop
4. Polluted, drought-stricken China eyes sea water China Daily 2007-06-13 http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2007-06/13/content_893710.htm
5. £21bn pipe will draw water 3,000 miles The Times August 2, 2006 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article696942.ece
6. Millions live in fear that China aims to steal their river The Times November 20, 2006 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article642349.ece
7. A modest proposal: China should liberalise water pricing The Economist Oct 26th 2006 http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_RDRGRPJ
8. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal
You might be interested in a talk and discussion this weekend at Utopia / 乌有之乡: 旱灾、水利与中国农业的出路 http://www.wyzxsx.com/Article/Class1/200902/69171.html
“Surely not.” Surely Black and White Cat has worked at state media long enough to realise that this is surely true? The first story on CCTV9 during the recent spat of reports about the drought was a dull fact-free ramble from a reporter looking at dry farmland. The next day, the bulletins were chock-full of ‘government at all levels goes all out to fight drought’ stuff. There’s no way CCTV was not aware that was coming…
Love the photo! Wen Bao Bao saving millions of hectares of wheat with a garden hose. Look folks! Here’s what you have been doing wrong all along..
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