Water Diversion Between Official Rhetoric and the Drive to Dominate Nature

Abstract

china's south-north Water Diversion scheme is intended to improve north china's water resources by channelling water from the Yangzi to the Yellow river basin along three routes, two of which are currently under construction. the third is planned to be established by 2050. although recent official rhetoric stresses a 'harmonious coexistence of mankind with nature', the official water diversion project entails a large-scale transformation of nature by human hands. however, governmental institutions legitimise the project as an inevitable step in the securing of china's sustainable development. Drawing mainly on official media sources and scientific and political materials on water diversion in china, this paper analyses the underlying discursive thought patterns that legitimise the official, i.e. political and scientific elites' drive to dominate nature. it reveals how appeals to 'traditional' chinese knowledge are used and deployed within the debate in order to strengthen normative approaches and thereby official and institutional power. Despite official rhetoric conjuring up the 'harmonious coexistence of mankind with nature', the 'modernist' idea of 'dominating nature' is expressed in the governmental representatives' actions and their mind set. Based on the south-north Water Diversion scheme as a case study, i argue that the slogan 'harmonious coexistence of mankind with nature' is only understandable as an expression of the government's drive to dominate nature. it can be understood as the most recent incarnation of an old ideal, adapted to the requirements of the present discourses within china, and across the globe, on the relationship between mankind and nature. the slogan of 'harmonious coexistence' functions as a means to redefine modernity in order to achieve a powerful position in the 'modern' globalised world.