Unrealistic diversion
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No matter how creative and imaginative we humans are, there is always a limit to what we can do when it comes to our relations with nature. That is why the proposal to divert seawater from North China's Bohai Sea to Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region met with strong resistance when it was first raised in early November.
The idea is that diverted seawater will fill the drying salt lakes within the vast stretches of desert and thus prevent further desertification. The strong sunlight in Xinjiang will then vaporize the seawater and so increase precipitation, which will improve the ecology in Xinjiang.
What imagination! True, many scientific inventions have been based on imagination. But it would be, not only ridiculous, but also irresponsible, to base a huge project on imagination alone.
At a news briefing on a study of Xinjiang's water resources on Tuesday, a dozen academics from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering described the proposal as infeasible.
Some of the academics said that the project, if put into practice, would be disastrous, both ecologically and economically. The water in the Bohai Sea is 3 percent salt. If 100 billion tons of seawater were diverted they would produce 3 billion tons of salt, which would undoubtedly deteriorate the already highly saline-alkali soil in Xinjiang. A meteorologist said it was also ridiculous to propose that the vaporized seawater would increase the rainfall in one particular area.
Another scientist said that the diversion would cause the seawater from the Yellow Sea to flow into the Bohai Sea, which would greatly increase the salt content in the latter's seawater and therefore disastrously impact the ecological environment of Bohai Sea.
We should never forget the lessons of the Great Leap Forward in the late 1950s. At that time, local leaders were encouraged to make production plans according to their imaginations rather than realistic situations. "Agricultural output can be as high as we can imagine" was a popular slogan in rural areas at that time. The result was the great famine in vast rural areas and the production of a lot of scrap iron.
The country's top leaders have reiterated time and time again that government policies must be made on the basis of feasible studies and analysis. The investment in such an unrealistic project would be inconceivably huge and without even the slightest benefit to local residents. Local governments should concentrate on things within their means that will be of real benefit to residents.
What China needs now is not another great leap of imagination, but down-to-earth progress toward its goal of building a harmonious and comfortably better-off society.
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