When the World Water Congress convenes this weekend in Asia for the first time, the choice of the Chinese capital Beijing would be nothing but befitting. The 1.3 billion people of the world’s most populous country have at their disposal only a quarter of the water per person that is available on average around the world.

But China’s water woes go far beyond the scarcity of water resources. Pollution has left nearly half of the water in China’s rivers suitable only for agricultural and industrial use, making fresh drinking water a luxury for many of China’s 800 million peasants. It has cost China about $136 billion, close to 7 per cent of its GDP, to clean up all the pollution pumped into the country’s environment just in 2004. Most of the money has to be put towards water pollution, announced the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA), last week.

“These are figures that are extremely alarming, and show the environmental situation is very serious,” Pan Yue, head of the national environmental protection watchdog, said in the SEPA report, released on September 7. China will be looking to the 5th World Water Congress, held in Beijing from September 10-14, to tap the latest technology and attract more foreign participation in its water industry. The forum will provide a “valuable platform to bring in advanced ideas, technologies and experiences in the water sector,” Qiu Baoxing, vice-minister of construction, said. The dearth of attention to ecological degradation has taken its toll on the country’s meagre water resources. Currently, 312 million Chinese villagers are facing water shortages and unsafe water supply, minister of water resources Wang Shucheng told Xinhua last week. China’s urban water environment is worsening too. About 400 of China’s 600 odd cities are short of water, according to the water ministry. In Beijing and some 100 other cities, the shortages are deemed to be “extreme”.

Despite the seriousness of the crisis, Chinese leaders have shied away from raising water prices to promote water conservation. Experts say current prices are not enough to make farmers conserve water. “Raising water prices is not the right option for China because rural incomes are not high,” Baoxing asserted. Rather than risk social unrest by raising water prices significantly, Beijing has announced it will spend about $125 billion over the next five years to improve urban water security and build sewage treatment systems. Another $5 billion are allocated to improve the water supply in rural areas.

But an editorial in the official China Daily warned that all the government investment will not be enough to solve China’s water crisis, if promises to clean up the country’s filthy rivers are not followed by concrete action. “The wish list the ministry of water resources has delivered for rural residents without access to safe drinking water is a proper commitment,” it said. “But it is one thing to put a target on a wish list. Achieving it is a challenge of a different order of magnitude.”