By Antoaneta Bezlova

BEIJING, Jan 25 (IPS) - Even as it expands economic cooperation with its wary South-east Asian neighbours, China’s thirst for energy is compelling it to resurrect territorial claims to resources-rich spots in the region that have lain dormant for years.

By Jie Cao*

TIELING, China, Oct 19 (IPS/AMIC) - “When I was young, if we had visitors, we’d go to the river to catch fish with a net. We could catch many big fish of different kinds,” recalled septuagenarian Xie, who lives in this village in the north-eastern Chinese province of Liaoning. “At that time, there were big willows on the riverbank, so the villagers could relax under the trees in summer.

By Antoaneta Bezlova

BEIJING, Oct 12 (IPS/IFEJ) - As a trickle of environmental problems emerging from the Three Gorges dam area steadily grows into a deluge, Chinese authorities have begun weighing plans to relocate several million people to avert an ecological catastrophe.

By Antoaneta Bezlova

SHANGHAI, Jun 7 (IPS) - Few people in this city ever imagine that their future would be defined by the ocean's rising tides. Dire climate change predictions have failed to stir public imagination into conjuring up images of China's most forward-looking city being engulfed by seawaters.

By Antoaneta Bezlova

BEIJING, May 23 (IPS) - China is emerging as a new backer of massive dam projects around the globe, giving rise to fears for pristine natural resources and the cultural heritage of river peoples.

KORLA, China, Nov 8 (IPS) - When the city of Korla rose from the Taklamakan desert in mid-1950s, it was hailed as a triumph of human willpower over adverse nature. Thousands of soldiers dispatched by the Chinese Communist Party put this place on the map in China's far west Xinjiang province, by digging 600 kilometres of channels to coax underground water to large collective farms.

HOTAN, China Oct 30 (IPS) - It takes two people to do it. To keep a watch on the desert road which emerges from the sands and disappears back into the sands. The cabin by the road where they live -- the sole human dwelling that meets the eye in the flat, open infinity of the desert -- is a well station, identified only as ‘no. 27'.

BEIJING, Sep 21 (IPS) - Faced with water problems that many fear are beyond repair, China is looking to tap Singapore's expertise in growing and thriving on limited water resources.

BEIJING, Sep 15 (IPS) - China has intensified its long-term quest to integrate the remote land and people of Tibet by building new infrastructure and drawing up plans to tap the Himalayan region's virgin water sources and its rich reserves of copper, gold and hydrocarbons.

BEIJING, Sep 8 (IPS) - When the World Water Congress convenes this weekend in Asia for the first time, the choice of the Chinese capital would be nothing but befitting. The 1.3 billion people of the world's most populous country have at their disposal only a quarter of the water per person that is available on average around the world.