ABSTRACT
Water is salvation and catastrophe in one. It is the lifeblood that keeps China’s communities alive, its food growing, its ecosystems flourishing and its commerce flowing. Too much here or too little there, however, and the well-being of the country’s 1 billion-plus people is at risk. Managing water resources is a delicate balancing act that the country’s administrators have performed for centuries, with their success and failure contributing the rise and fall of many a dynasty.1
