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Comment by eloff | Hacker News Reader

China has invested billions in constructing mammoth aqueducts to do just this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South%E2%80%93North_Water_Tran...

https://www.gokunming.com/en/blog/item/4038/china_considerin...

Meanwhile in Western Canada, we steadfastly refuse to sell water into the US, despite all of our fresh water running into the Pacific Ocean anyway...

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In Canada there exists a widespread belief that if you start selling water, you have to sell it.

I am not sure this is correct, but it is widespread, and probably affects willingness to sell anything.

http://www.cbc.ca/radio/the180/more-on-nafta-and-water-parti...

It's nonsense. Even if NAFTA somehow forced the provinces to sell water at market rates to anyone who wanted to buy it, the revenue would accrue to the provincial government. Nothing would stop the provincial government from deciding to distribute this income as a dividend to all citizens. The end result is that the citizens of the province could definitely out-bid foreigners for the water, since the money they pay comes right back to them.

> China has invested billions in constructing mammoth aqueducts to do just this

This is also the reason they invaded Tibet.

Maybe someone gave you water as a newly made up excuse for China taking Tibet?

But make no mistake about it, on October 7, 1950, the Chinese were not thinking about water. I'm fairly certain most historians would agree on that point.

Here are two comments on r/askhistorians saying water was one of the reasons [1], along with natural resources in general [2].

Of course that's not the only reason; other answers make clear there were a lot of factors. Now though, Tibetan water is a huge issue, including for other countries downstream of Tibet including India and Pakistan [3]. There are no water treaties between these countries; China has been building a lot of dams and is planning a massive 600-mile pipeline to divert Tibetan water that would otherwise go to India [4].

Tibet is the third largest repository of fresh water after the two poles [5].

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/35fuz5/leavi...

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2giaje/was_t...

[3] https://www.equaltimes.org/china-s-water-grab-in-tibet-risks

[4] https://qz.com/1114843/chinas-grand-plan-for-the-brahmaputra...

[5] https://www.theglobalist.com/tibet-and-21st-century-water-wa...

Anyone else feel like [3-5] should be a bigger issue? Desertification is scary as hell already but this is even more immediate.

What were they thinking about?

general access and control?

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