Land under 46 cities is sinking, the government says. Areas around Beijing, the capital, have sunk by up to 14 inches over the past decade. Although Chinese officials warn publicly about relying too heavily on wells, drought in recent years has complicated their efforts. As rivers dry up, cities and farms drill more wells. More than 100 cities in northern China are short of water, the official Xinhua News Agency has reported.
Some reservoirs are dry.
Shanghai has switched to river water for most uses, slowing its annual descent to less than two-fifths of an inch. But after years of rapid decline, even that threatens China's business capital, which sprawls across flat land less than 10 feet above the Huangpu. Drained Water Shanghai, one of the world's most densely populated cities, switched fairly easily to water from the Huangpu and Yangtze rivers. But it still suffers the legacy of long, severe bouts of ground subsidence. The problem stems from Shanghai's rapid 19th century metamorphosis into a foreign colonial base.