Editors Note: Are natural phenomena really natural? These disasters should be viewed from truly scientific point of view.

Droughts, locust swarms, and sand-dust storms occurred frequently. Shandong Province is faced with a summer famine, and over 40 million people are affected.

(The Chinese Overseas Press) News from the meeting of summer disaster relief at Shandong Province indicates that a severe summer famine is occurring due to the natural disasters of severe droughts, locusts, and sand-dust storms. The Shandong government has asked local governments to take full actions to provide disaster relief.

In Shandong, 44,940,000 people have been affected and 27,080,000 people have been suffering from natural disasters this summer. In terms of crops, 3,680,000 hectares have been affected, 2,180,000 hectares have been hit, and 322,900 hectares have nothing to harvest due to the natural disasters. During this summer famine in Shandong, the grain supply is 229,000 tons short and 5,256,600 people do not have enough food, among whom over 3,170,000 people need relief.

To ensure that the people affected can safely survive the summer famine, the Shandong Government has asked local governments to strengthen their actions in disaster relief, and to organize people affected in disaster areas to develop activities of self-help and mutual help. For the areas having a lot of people affected and needing large amount of grain, the local governments should organize to lend grain to the people. The Department of Finance of Shandong province will provide the financing for the lending of grain.

(Translated on July 24, 2000 from http://chinese.yahoo.com/headlines/000719/china/chinapress/071931)

Boxun News Network (Aug. 10, 2000): As drought continues in Anhui province, 3.14 million people have difficulty obtaining drinking water.

(Boxun News Network) A few days ago, the government of Anhui province held a press conference regarding the drought-fighting work in the whole province and notified media about the current drought situation: According to statistics, up to now the number of people who have difficulty obtaining drinking water due to the drought has risen up to 3.14 million; the direct agricultural economic loss from the summer drought has already reached 4.6 billion Yuan RMB.

Furthermore, the weather bureau forecasted that in the near future it will primarily remain clear and dry throughout the whole province and, in the region south of the Huai River the rainless condition will persist through August. The drought situation throughout the whole province will continue to worsen.

Central Agency: Drought in Jiangxi province affecting more than 9 million Chinese hectares (Mu), and more than 4 million people are fighting the drought

Chinese News Agency, Nanchang, August 7 (Reporter Duan Bayi)

The severe drought in Jiangxi has affected around 10 million Chinese hectares of crops throughout the province, more than 1.2 million Chinese hectares of cropshave been wiped out, and more than 4.8 million people are involved in fighting the drought.

It is predicted that the rainfall in the north and central Jiangxi areas will remain less than normal in August, and the drought in the aforementioned areas will worsen. The headquarter of flood prevention and drought fighting of Jiangxi province requested that the local governments deploy more artificial rainfall to alleviate the drought.

LACK OF AWARENESS ON WATER CRISIS

Over-Pumping Underground Water The world's largest "cone of depression" in North China

(The Chinese Overseas Press) Because of over-pumping underground water in North China, the largest "cone of depression" in the world has formed. Experts said that not only would the big cone cause ground subsidence and sea water intrusion, but it would also affect the continuing development of this area.

Due to water shortage, Cangzhou City of Hebei Province, located on the coast of Bohai, can only count on the over-pumping of groundwater to meet the needs of its economic development, and has thus created one of the "fastest" growing cones of depression in China. The water tablein central Cangzhou has descended 1.68 meters. If it continues decreasing at this rate, the concerns about "The land becoming the sea" will no longer be a groundless worry.

Beijing is now experiencing an unprecedented situation of severe water crisis, including: no precipitation, depleted ground water , and over-pumping of underground water. An officer of the WaterConservation Department in Beijing said that Beijing's water supply is now relying on water in the reservoirs saved from numerous years. Because the ground water supply is inadequate and underground water was severely over-pumped, the water tableof the entire city has descended 2 meters.

In fact, Cangzhou and Beijing are just examples of the entire region of North China. There is no large river passing through this large plain of North China. In recent years, due to the decreasing precipitation and the continuously increasing demand of water, North China has become one of the regions with the most severe water shortage, and the average water resource per person is ranked third-last in China.

Due to severe water shortage, people are forced to look for groundwater. Currently, there are more than ninety thousands pumped wells in Hebei Province, which makes up more than one fourth of the wells in the country. In recent years, the amount of over-pumped groundwater in the tens of billions of cubic meters, in which more than twenty billions cubic meters are the groundwater at the deeper level and cannot be regenerated. Ying Rouzhi, a water conservation expert in Hebei, said that groundwater over-pumping has descended the underground water level in North China region in a large scale. In Hebei, there are more than twenty "cones of depression" developed, and in addition to those in both Beijing and Tianjin, the total affected area is about 50,000 square kilometers.

With the formation of cones of depression, the ground of the region also subsides which has caused a series of problems, such as sinking and splitting of railway bases, buildings, and underground pipelines, and the emerging flood crisis from dikes and rivers. Some dike segments have sunk about one meter. The Geology and Mineral Department investigated and found that there were more than 400 ground fissures in 49 cities of North China. In Qinhuangdao City alone, the area with seawater intrusion is 50 square kilometers, resulting in the severe corrosion of industrial-cooling equipment. Because of the groundwater level decrease, more than 40,000 pumped wells have been abandoned, and half of the rest only have a 50% output or less. The pumps have to be upgraded many times, which increases the financial burden on the farmers.

Experts emphasize that the forming of a big cone of depression not only indicates that we are over-pumping groundwater, but that it also means that people do not have an awareness of the water crisis. In order to sustain the current economic development, people are using water that belongs to their descendants. If it continues in this direction, the groundwater at a deep level will run out, and the economic development in the future will become "a tree without root": this is a main issue affecting future generations.