Water stress in northern China is driving some of the biggest engineering projects in human history: pipelines to transfer billions of cubic metres of water from south to north, desalination plants to supply the east coast, proposals to pump water across the country to open up coal production in the most arid regions. All of these schemes stem from the fact one of the most heavily populated, economically and agriculturally productive regions of the world is also gravely short of water...

Source: China Dialogue, http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/4814-The-shrinking-depths-below)