← Terraforming · Water & diversion
South-North Water Transfer
The largest inter-basin transfer now running. Two routes move Yangtze water north. The western mountain route is still a plan. The social and ecological bill is not a rumour.
Jurisdiction: People’s Republic of China
Years / status: Overall plan 2002. Eastern route phase 1 operating November 2013; middle route phase 1 December 2014. Western route still planning. Status: ongoing (partial).
The plan
Mao-era talk became a three-route scheme: east along the Grand Canal with pumping; middle by gravity from an enlarged Danjiangkou Reservoir toward Beijing and Tianjin; west from upper Yangtze tributaries toward the Yellow River at high altitude. Design talk for a completed system is on the order of 40-plus cubic kilometres a year: a target, not a present fact.
Construction / status
The eastern and middle first phases were built: more than a thousand kilometres each, pumping stations on the east, a raised Danjiangkou dam on the middle. Water has been delivered to Beijing, Tianjin, Henan, Hebei, Jiangsu and Shandong. Published displacement for the middle-route reservoir and canals is on the order of 330,000-375,000 people. Official construction cost figures differ by source (tens of billions of U.S. dollars for the finished eastern and middle works).
What went wrong, or only partly worked
North China cities drink Yangtze water. That is a real operational result. Pollution on the eastern route, reduced downstream Yangtze flow, groundwater and wetland changes, and the human cost of resettlement are documented in the engineering and review literature. The western route remains unbuilt after decades of surveys; 2023 official comments still described planning consensus, not excavation.
Lessons
A transfer can relieve a city and still be a displacement machine. Moving water is not the same as using less of it. Leave the western tunnels in the “not built” column until they are. Do not treat an operating canal as proof that every future diversion is wise.
Sources
Zhang 2016 Engineering review (east 15 Nov 2013; middle 12 Dec 2014); Water 17:3275 (2025) on costs and displacement; China Daily 2023 on the unbuilt western route.