ChinaFotoPress/Getty Images

A fishing boat runs aground on grass at Poyang Lake in Jiujiang, Jiangxi Province, China on Saturday. The Yangtze river is suffering from a severe drought, with the lowest level of rainfall in 5 decades.

By Eric Baculinao, NBC News’ Beijing Bureau Chief

BEIJING – “Oh waters of Honghu Lake, wave after wave. The fishermen live ever better, year after year…” are the happy lines from a popular folk song sung by communities in Hubei province who have depended on the vast lake for their economic sustenance for centuries. But now the lake is drying up in what many are calling the worst drought in more than 50 years and the song may not be heard for quite some time.   

In the neighboring province of Jiangxi, fishing boats sit eerily stranded on grassland that was once the bed of Poyang Lake, China’s largest fresh water lake, a dramatic scene that attests to the severity of south China’s 200-day drought. 

Already, the lack of rainfall and water shortages have affected 35 million people in five provinces, with some 4.2 million directly threatened by lack of drinking water, prompting authorities to adopt emergency rationing and distribution of water. 

The implications of the drought in southern China, traditionally a region with abundant water resources, have not been lost on Ma Jun, China’s leading environmentalist who has focused on the fragility of the water resource system of China for years. 
“It is a new warning signal,” said Ma, the author of “China’s Water Crisis.”

Time to re-examine China’s water policy
Ma’s seminal book is widely acknowledged as the most comprehensive and authoritative documentation of the enormous challenges facing China’s water resources. Many observers have likened Ma’s 1999 book to Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring,” which has been credited for launching environmental movement in the U.S., and believe it has done the same thing in China.  
 
“This drought tells us that water scarcity does not only exist in north China, but increasingly south China is also facing water challenges,” Ma told NBC News. “It is a new warning signal because it shows the south is no longer a store with unlimited water supply.”

He suggested China needs to re-examine its long-term water strategy and propensity for mega-projects, including the $62 billion South-North Water Diversion Project that would transfer nearly 36 billion cubic meters of water every year from China’s Yangtze River Basin and ship it to the arid north.

The gigantic water diversion project, which started in 2002 and is planned for completion in 2050, will be China’s greatest engineering project after the Great Wall, and will cost more than twice as much as the Three Gorges Dam, the world’s biggest dam.  

DAVID GRAY / Reuters

A farmer's hat is seen on a dried-up portion of an irrigation canal leading from Honghu Lake, as a fisherman manoeuvres his boat with a pole on the canal near Honghu city in central China's Hubei province on Sunday.

“We were going to divert [this] large volume of water from the Yangtze River to support north China, but now we are encountering this drought in south China, which is a warning bell for us,” Ma said.

Is the Three Gorges Dam a culprit?
For Ma, however, the more immediate issue is the possible role of the Three Gorges Dam, the world’s largest hydroelectric project, in the current drying up of lakes and rivers in the south China region. “The Yangtze River and the lakes downstream have quite a delicate relationship,” he said, that might have been upset by the dam’s construction.

“These great lakes connected with the Yangtze River would take flood and excessive waters from the Yangtze during the rainy season, and will feed water into the Yangtze during the dry season, but now things have changed with the Three Gorges Dam,” he said, arguing that the dam has reduced the amount of water available in the lake areas.

“With lesser water running from the Yangtze into the lakes, the lakes will be losing water over time,” he added, citing the progressive shrinking of south China’s great lakes.

Referring to the flow of water from the dam to refill the lower Yangtze rivers and lakes during the dry season, he said it is “helpful in theory,” but not in practice. 

More alarming, according to Ma, is the plan to build 12 more dams on the Yangtze River and tributaries, with a combined capacity larger than the Three Gorges Dam. “It is time to review the negative impact of the Three Gorges Dam,” he said.

Meanwhile, Ma’s concerns have recently been echoed by the government which in an unprecedented statement admitted that while the Three Gorges Dam has been successful, it has also created “urgent” environmental, geological and economic problems.

Related links:

Drought parches China's 'land of fish and rice'

China confronts raft of problems at Three Gorges
 
Researcher Xu Yuan contributed to this report.

/

China's President Hu Jintao and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il shake hands at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Thursday. The photo was distributed by China's official Xinhua News Agency Thursday.

BEIJING--This week saw what appeared to be a re-injection of warmth and energy in relations between two longtime ideological allies with a shared history of fighting side by side in war.

No.  Not that “special relationship” between the U.S. and U.K.

That other one, between North Korea and China.

In the past few days, we have been treated to the pomp and circumstance of President Barack Obama’s visit to Britain—including a Guard of Honor inspection at Buckingham Palace, a state banquet hosted by the Queen, an address to both Houses of Parliament, and dissection within the British media about how their country is back in America’s good graces.

Even China’s 24-hour state-run news channel, CCTV13, devoted significant minutes to covering Obama’s trip and the bond between the two nations—now known as the “essential” relationship.

Contrast that with the coverage of Kim Jong-il’s visit to China this week, which has been virtually nonexistent.

Well, okay, it’s existed, but was essentially unconfirmed until it was over.

Early confirmation of a sort did come from a surprising corner. During a summit with his Japanese and South Korean counterparts in Japan last weekend, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao mentioned his government had invited Kim to visit “to understand the Chinese development and use it for their own development.”

However, the Chinese Foreign Ministry has stuck to its usual line, refusing to comment on the visit.

Just about the only news outlets that have confidently reported the North Korean leader’s trip through China via his special armored train (he doesn't like to fly) have been the South Korean and Japanese ones. 

Although grainy sightings of Kim in Jiangsu Province have popped up online, reporters for most other news organizations stuck to using words like “reportedly” and “allegedly” in covering the story.

Even the Chinese government-run Global Times had resorted to quoting other media for its coverage, explaining that, as a rule, officials from both countries don’t comment on rumors or reports of Kim’s visits as they’re in progress.   

However, by late Thursday, China's state broadcaster CCTV and Xinhua finally confirmed the visit  -- which was seen as an indication that it was over since neither Beijing nor Pyongyang report Kim's visits until after he returns to North Korea.

Among the highlights of Kim’s alleged visit were: tours of factories, an industrial park, and a shopping center; meetings with Wen and President Hu Jintao; and a visit to the Zhongguancun tech corridor in western Beijing. 

Pictures, of course, have yet to emerge of the Dear Leader looking at any of these sights. China's official Xinhua News Agency only released the photo of Kim with Hu, seen above, Thursday.

And while some observers have speculated on the reason for Kim's visit (food aid? tips on how to set up a market economy?), there's been plenty more guessing about the identity of a woman in his traveling entourage (wife? translator? the power behind the man?).

It’s believed Kim is already back in North Korea's capital, Pyongyang.  

Entertaining related link: Kim Jong Il looking at things  

DAVID GRAY / Reuters

A Pakistan national flag flies alongside a Chinese national flag in front of the portrait of Chairman Mao Zedong on Beijing's Tiananmen Square during Pakistan Prime Minister Gilani's visit to China.

By Ian Williams, NBC News Correspondent

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – At breakfast at my hotel I was having trouble with the cornflake dispenser. It was one of those tall cylindrical containers with a lever at the bottom that needed to be turned for the cornflakes to tumble out, only the lever was stuck. I gave up in frustration and almost walked into a young woman who'd been observing my dismal efforts.

"Dui Bu Qui," (“excuse me”), she said, addressing me in Mandarin, before simply opening the top of the container and ladling out her cornflakes.

She then returned to a table of what looked to me like Chinese businessmen. She was by far the smartest-dressed at the table, the translator I assumed, while the men – ruddy faced, a bit rough around the edges, and looking a little uncomfortable in dark suits and ties – were fairly typical of the traders or small town entrepreneurs I'm more familiar with on trips to provincial China.

I looked further around the restaurant. There were several more tables of what looked to me like Chinese businessmen, while at the back, more discretely seated, was a more polished group, Chinese diplomats or bankers perhaps, pouring over some documents. (Possibly the latest photos of the American stealth helicopter downed in the Osama bin Laden raid, one colleague mischievously suggested. The Chinese military is allegedly anxious to get a look at the plans for the sophisticated chopper that was capable of evading radar detection).

The reason I mention this is because this restaurant, in one of Islamabad's best and most secure hotels, has always been an anthropologists dream.

At any one time the scene provides a wonderful insight into what's going on, who's up and who's down in turbulent Pakistan. Journalists, diplomats, business people and spooks rub shoulders around the buffet table with Pakistani government officials and bearded frontier tribesmen in flowing robes.

On a recent morning, there were several tattooed Western men with shaven heads and bull-necks, some sort of security for one of the aforementioned I assumed, for whom "low-key" was clearly not part of the training.

China, Pakistan’s ‘all-weather friend’
It’s been like this over the many years I've been coming to Pakistan, and staying at this hotel, but I've never seen so many Chinese at the breakfast buffet.

One look at the newspapers lying around the restaurant, and it’s easy to see why the Chinese are so welcome here.

Jason Lee / AP

Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, left, is welcomed by Chinese President Hu Jintao for a meeting at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Friday.

"China urges US to respect Pak sovereignty," headlined Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper Thursday. While the Express Tribune declared: "China endorses Pakistan's response to US raid."

There has been much Pakistani praise of their "all-weather friend" in Beijing.

Pakistan's Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani has been in Beijing this week and just clinched a deal in which China will provide Pakistan with 50 fighter jets to the tune of $20-25 million a pop. 

The visit was organized some time back, but China has sought to maximize its diplomatic advantage following Pakistan's humiliation over the killing of Osama Bin Laden, and the subsequent crisis in U.S.-Pakistan relations.

"China and Pakistan will remain forever good neighbors, good friends, good partners and good brothers," according to the Chinese Prime Minister, Wen Jiabao, quoted approvingly in newspapers here.

The authorities in Punjab Province have even declared they will no longer accept aid from the U.S., but only from friends who do no attach strings, read China.

Of course China and Pakistan have long been close, with Beijing allegedly helping in the development of Pakistan's nuclear weapon program, but it has only been more recently that the economic relationship has really taken off. China is pouring cash into Pakistan's infrastructure and natural resources, and in a December visit the Chinese prime minister announced billions of dollars of proposed investments.

No wonder the crowds around that buffet are looking increasingly Chinese.

Western diplomats, watching from their corner of the restaurant, seemed remarkably relaxed about the budding friendship between the two regional neighbors.

Whatever diplomatic advantage it may be seeking this week, China has welcomed the death of Bin Laden, and has every reason itself to be concerned about Islamic militancy across the mountains from its own Muslim areas. Western diplomats believe its private message to Gilani is likely to have been very different from the public platitudes.

And Chinese economic assistance can be double-edged.

Investment is primarily motivated by China's hunger for raw materials, and it is frequently accompanied by Chinese labor. Trade between the two countries is also heavily skewed in China's favor. Pakistani manufacturers cannot compete with the cheap Chinese goods flooding Pakistan's markets, leading traders to frequently grumble about quality.

Back at the breakfast buffet, the young woman who I'd (almost) bumped into at the cornflake dispenser, rose to leave with her entourage. She and a colleague carried between them a heavy bag that appeared to contain two Chinese tea sets – gifts, I assumed, for their would-be business partners in a country that for the moment needs every friend it can get.

BEIJING – In 2005, I was deeply engaged in an extended military campaign on battlefields across China. Thousands of Chinese and Americans fell each day, but the only real casualty suffered was my bruised ego as I was easily picked off time and again in a blaze of glory playing the videogame, Battlefield 2.

Battlefield 2, a popular first-person multiplayer shooter released that year, pitted U.S. Marines, Chinese forces and a fictional Middle Eastern Coalition against each other in imaginary locations around the world.

The game’s Chinese maps and scenarios were incredibly popular among Chinese players who took great pleasure in blasting me and countless others with a variety of different weapons regardless of whether my character was wearing a Chinese or American uniform.

Which is why it is surprising to see the recent release of Glorious Mission (also known as, Mission of Honor), a military simulation jointly developed by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and Chinese software developer, Giant Interactive Group. It has generated waves in the U.S. not for its graphics or game play – but for the fact that American soldiers are the main adversary.

Objections don't appear to be focused on the game's existence. After all, the U.S. military is heavily invested in its own acclaimed military training and recruitment game, America’s Army, but it features a generic enemy, so as not to offend anyone.

Rather, the concern is that the game, which was ostensibly developed as a training tool for the PLA, makes American solders and equipment the enemy combatant and could lead young, impressionable trainees to believe that the United States is the enemy.

There are indeed legitimate concerns that some nationalist elements in the PLA do view conflict with the United States as inevitable. However, in the case of Glorious Mission, it seems unlikely that one simulation could dramatically alter the thinking of PLA enlisted men. After all, the generation of soldiers that Glorious Mission is geared towards has already been exposed to a wide variety of online games that pit players against a whole host of enemies ranging from the real to the ridiculous.

CCTV

Designed by the People's Liberation Army and a Chinese gaming company, Glorious Mission is a military simulation game intended for training purposes.

Take a trip to any Internet café or arcade around China and the one thing that can quickly be concluded is that when it comes to video games, teenagers playing first-person shooters don’t particularly care who or what they are shooting at, as long as they are shooting at something.

Online dominance                 
Perhaps what should be of greater concern to American tech insiders is the apparent smoothness of the graphics and game play of Glorious Mission.

The successful development of Glorious Mission represents not just a small step forward by the PLA towards creating an American style “virtual army experience,” but also the Chinese gaming industry’s noticeable move up the technological food chain.

In the last few years there has been an explosion in online gaming in China, fueled by the rise of countless Chinese gaming companies. In 2010 alone, China's online gaming market raked in 32.37 billion Yuan (approximately $4.9 billion) – a 26.3 percent increase over 2009.

With over 76 million online game players in China and a business model that sensibly caters to young gamers’ wallets through low-cost games and cheap add-ons, it is no small wonder that the country has quickly risen to become the largest online gaming market, expected to be valued in excess of $8 billion by 2014.

Meanwhile, as U.S. gaming companies have largely struggled to sell their products in China, Chinese companies are beginning to make in-roads in the U.S. market. Earlier this year, China’s largest Internet company, Tencent Holdings, bought a majority share of American gaming company Riot Games Inc. for more than $350 million.

Bo Gu / NBC News

Yang Libing (with his son) holds up a photo of his missing daughter, Yang Ling.

GAOPING, HUNAN PROVINCE – Until this year, Yang Libing, whose daughter was taken from him by family planning authorities, would receive visits from one or two Chinese journalists every year.

"They would come to interview me about my daughter," he recalled emphatically.  "But nothing ever came of those reports.  Still no one did anything."

In 2005, family planning officials in Longhui County, Hunan Province, took away Yang's daughter, Yang Ling, when she was eleven months old.   They accused him of not registering her birth, thereby breaking the strict, nationwide one-child policy – even though she was his first and only offspring.

The authorities sent his daughter off to an orphanage.  From there, Yang believes she was adopted by an American family, with the family planning officials receiving a few hundred dollars in return.

Yang has not seen her since.

"I wish I could tell her that I didn't give her away," he told NBC News in an interview at his spartan home in the mountains of Gaoping.  "It wasn't a case of not wanting her.  I didn't reject her."

Caixin Century publishes report
Yang's story has the hallmarks of a great tragedy, embodying many controversial issues that touch a raw nerve in China: local corruption, brutal enforcement of the one-child policy, the policy itself, child trafficking, and poverty.

And yet, despite stories by local journalists and a long feature printed in the Los Angeles Times two years ago, his story never seemed to catch on.  

Then last week, the highly respected independent Chinese weekly news magazine, Caixin Century, ran a 15,000-word investigative report that featured Yang and several other families in Gaoping whose children suffered the same fate.

This time, the tale of baby-trafficking by corrupt family planning officials electrified China's media.  Even the state-run newspapers covered the story, some reporting that an official investigation was underway.

Within a day of publication, teams of local and foreign journalists (including NBC News) began tramping into the lush, terraced hills of Longhui County, perhaps the poorest area in all in Hunan – which is already one of China's more impoverished provinces.
 
So why did the story suddenly capture the media's attention now?

An obvious reason is that Caixin has a sterling reputation for its investigative journalism.  Furthermore, the report was richly detailed and well-researched, the product of four years' long work.

"A few years ago, the story was told very simply," said Shangguan Jiaoming, the Caixin reporter behind the Hunan story.  "My report includes a lot of detail and analysis."

Moreover, Caixin is homegrown, i.e., its reporting is done by Chinese in Chinese.

Bo Gu / NBC News

Gaoping sits up in the mountains of Longhui County, Hunan Province.

"It really shows that however much foreign correspondents report on China, unless a story gets picked up by domestic media here, there isn’t much...we can do to improve the lives of people here that we interview,” said Melissa Chan, the Beijing correspondent for al-Jazeera English.  (Just as it does in the Middle East, al-Jazeera has a reputation in China for moving quickly and aggressively to cover politically sensitive stories. Chan's report can be seen here.)

Another reason is the growing popularity of microblogs like Sina.com's Weibo or Twitter.  Although the latter is blocked in China, it can be accessed via virtual private networks (VPNs) that bypass the firewall – a tool widely used by the same crop of intellectual and professional Chinese elites who comprise Caixin's readership.

Through microblogs, news of the Caixin report spread like wildfire.  As with many stories of this nature, anything that survives Internet censors for even a few hours can gain traction and reach readers across the country.

But there's another reason – one which might seem a bit surprising given the repressive trend of cracking down on dissidents, activists, and media (especially foreign) in China during recent months: good old-fashioned market competition. 

"Since the mid-1990s, commercial media in [mainland] China has become much more competitive," said David Bandurski of the China Media Project at Hong Kong University.  There was no "media market" or "ad-driven publications" before then.  Much of that transformation came about because then-Premier Zhao Ziyang pushed for a more open, liberal press corps – one which would try to use public opinion to monitor political power rather than serve as a means to "marshal public opinion."

The trend sustained itself even after Zhao was sacked from the Communist Party for supporting the students leading the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.

Some of the more remarkable stories broken by domestic Chinese reporters include the AIDS villages in Henan Province and the SARS crisis.  The former story, in particular, was reported a year before it appeared in Western media like the New York Times.

China’s commercial media: driven and aggressive
"The reality is that commercial media – as opposed to state-run media – has to sell to readers, they have to have a different look, a different appeal," continued Bandurski.

As a result, the commercial news organizations command circulation figures enviable by publishers anywhere in the world.

Although it has not been possible to audit circulation data, Bandurski reckons that, based on China Press Yearbook statistics, "In every case, if you look at the Party-run paper and the corresponding commercial spin-off in any region," the latter outstrips the former in terms of readership.

Adrienne Mong / NBC News

Villagers from Gaoping look at a copy of the Caixin Century.

"For example, in Wuhan (a second-tier city with a long intellectual history), the commercial paper has 1, 2, or 3 million circulation," he said.  "No Party newspaper has a circulation like that."

Among those that produce some of best, influential, tough, in-depth investigative reporting are Caixin and Beijing News in Beijing and the Southern group in Guangdong Province, which publishes Southern Daily and Southern Weekend. 

These organizations constantly recalibrate their coverage, led by senior editors such as Hu Shuli at Caixin (an excellent profile of her ran in 2009 in The New Yorker), for example, who have a finely honed sixth sense for politics, for knowing when to push their agenda.

One way in which the more aggressive Chinese commercial media outlets appear to escape being shut down is to adopt what Bandurski calls "the shouldering the door theory."  One publication knocks the door, then another, then another – the premise being that the government can't go after every organization all at once.

"It's always the media pushing," said Bandurski.  "It's never the government loosening."

Corrupt media, too
Which is not to say that the Chinese press corps is made up of only hard-charging truth-seekers.

Far from it.  Local journalists earn low salaries, all too often supplemented by the notorious "red envelopes" – cash gifts supplied by the subjects of their reporting – and other "perks."

Our savvy driver from Hunan's capital of Changsha – with years of experience shuttling around local and foreign reporters – summed up what he’s seen.

"When the foreign media come out here, they work hard.  They rarely take breaks and work through the entire trip.  The Chinese media?  When they get an assignment, they look at it as an opportunity to play tourist.  They see the sights.  They eat long meals at nice restaurants. They're not interested in the story."

More seriously, there are regular instances of blackmail, wherein reporters have demanded money or other forms of compensation in return for keeping silent.

Regardless, the tenacity and dedication on the part of so many other Chinese journalists is remarkable.

"The controls on the media have been tighter than we've seen in a long time," said Bandurski.  "And yet there is still so much coverage [like the Hunan baby trafficking story] by places like Caixin coming out.  These organizations are pushing harder and harder and finding ways to do that kind of reporting."

With additional reporting by Bo Gu.

Related story: Growing calls in China to change the one-child policy

Chinese babies sold for adoption in the U.S.?