Plan for China's Water Crisis Spurs Concern

``North China is dying. A chronic drought is ravaging farmland. The Gobi Desert is inching south. The Yellow River, the so-called birthplace of Chinese civilization, is so polluted it can no longer supply drinking water. The rapid growth of megacities -- 22 million people in Beijing and 12 million in Tianjin alone -- has drained underground aquifers that took millenniums to fill.''