The Coming China Wars: Where They Will Be Fought and How They Can Be Won

Chapter 8. The Bread and Water Wars—Nary a (Clean) Drop to Drink

	Of the 2000-plus villagers in Huang Meng Ying, nine are deaf, 14 mentally disabled, three blind and nine physically handicapped. The villagers also point to the surge in birth defects, lesions and gall bladder infections in recent years—a sure indication, they feel, that the water is contaminated. . . . A glimpse of the river, which once irrigated what was one of the most fertile regions of the country, reveals why the villagers have arrived at this conclusion. The once-clear waters are today a floating mass of garbage and chemical effluents, unfit for irrigation, let alone drinking.
	--Asian Chemical News[1]

	Water, water everywhere and, Nary a drop to drink.
	--Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ...