I suppose it’s no secret that the western deserts of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are in bad shape. Since the 1960′s, thanks to Khrushchev’s Virgin Lands program, the Syr Darya and Amu Darya rivers have been diverted for water-intensive cotton irrigation—draining the Aral Sea into a pale empty shell of its former self, with 50% less surface area and 75% less volume than it had in 1950. The loss is quite striking, and has created tremendous health problems in the fishing towns so memorialized by Aitmatov by cursing them with poisonous dust storms which cause a dramatically higher incidence of lung disease and cancer, and a bankrupt fishing industry. Despite some small hope brought to the Kazakhs by the Kok-Aral Dam, there is little hope of fully recovering the sea (and this fully ignores the issue of buried bioweapons on Vozrozhdeniya Island).
Anyway, the point with this isn’t to dwell on one of the worst man-made environmental catastrophes on the planet. It is to point to another: Lake Balkhash.
Yes, Lake Balkhash, which sits in a massive basin the size of California, is apparently threatened in part by Chinese water diversion. That’s not to say Kazakhstan doesn’t itself play a role—the area surrounding the lake, including numerous small towns, farms, and factories, all draw on Balkhash’s water for their livelihoods.
The lake is in serious danger of following the sad fate of Aral. But, just as in Aral, fixing it is no simple matter—far too many people in far too dire straits rely on its waters. They can’t simply be uprooted, nor can they simply be cut off. Other measures, even stopgap ones, must do for now. But it is a tough choice—which explains the current stand off between Kazakhstan and China.
My question for the Chinese government: does Xinjiang really need another 40 million people?
This post was written by...
Joshua Foust – author of 1771 posts on Registan.net.
Joshua Foust is a Fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. His research focuses primarily on Central and South Asia. Joshua is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a columnist for PBS Need to Know. Joshua appears regularly on the BBC World News, Aljazeera, and international public radio. Joshua is also a regular contributor to Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor. Follow him on twitter: @joshuafoust
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China’s movement of ethnic Han Chinese into Xinjiang is suspect at best. The area can hardly support them with food, let alone water. It made be simplifying the matter to suggest it’s Just To outnumber the Uighurs, but I feel confident that that must be at least part of the reason.
So – does Xinjiang need another 40 million people? The Chinese government may answer, “Yes, but not another 40 million Uighurs.”
Where did this figure of 40 mln come from? Is it a new “intervention” plan of Chinese CP?
Umm, the 40m figure came from the New York Times story. And it is very much an invasion, just as China sent millions of Han into Tibet and Inner Mongolia.
Goodness, what a disaster, if that’s true! Population of Han Chinese in Xinjiang already prevails the one of Uyghurs + ethnic minorities.
Yeah, well the Han outnumber the Tibetans in Xizang thanks to an aggressive internal colonization. That makes it all just dandy, doesn’t it.