China drought worsens in parched north
In northern China farmers are working hard to try to save their crops from the drought
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Across northern China swathes of land are dry, parched by drought.
In some areas these are the driest conditions in a lifetime. Snowfalls in recent days have helped a little, but still, across huge areas of land, water is in short supply.
The countryside is dotted with empty dams. Standing on top of one, near Qufu in Shandong Province, you can see just a tiny muddy pool in the centre of a dam that is hundreds of metres long.
Sitting rusting on the earth is a small boat. Along the dry dam floor people have been planting rows of crops because it has been like this for so long.
Li Si Jiao, 77, his back stooped with age, shuffles slowly along a path on top of the dam. His face is weathered and creased with lines. He gestures at the dam and says the water used to stretch all the way to the village in the distance, but no more.
This is China's breadbasket, the heart of its grain growing lands, and all around are Shandong's wheat fields. They are full of lines of seedlings, sprouting from the ground, but wilting and yellowing.
A grey, polluted haze hangs in the air. Every few hundred yards small groups of men and women are working to try to save their crops from the drought.
China is the world's biggest grower and consumer of wheat. In normal years it is self-sufficient. But if it has to import grain this year then that will have an impact far afield.
Already just the warnings of a possible shortfall in China's crop have put pressure on global wheat prices.
Emergency measures
As we approach one group of farmers they crank an old engine into life. It sputters, and then water spurts out from a thick pipe dangling down an open well perhaps 20m (65ft) deep.
The well belongs to Liu De Xu and his wife Wang Li Jun. They are sharing the water with their neighbours and it has to be rationed. Yesterday it was Liu De Xu's turn to water his tiny patch of land, about 10m wide and 50m long, where his wheat is planted. Today it is his neighbour's turn.
Warnings of a possible shortfall in China's crop have put pressure on global wheat prices
Mr Liu and his wife are now desperate to prevent their seedlings from dying.
He has a metal contraption slung over his shoulder. Walking behind him, she guides it as it tears at the ground and spreads fertiliser to keep the crop growing. It is hard, manual labour, and Mr Liu puffs and strains as he marches along.
Then his wife grabs some of the wheat plants and runs over to me. "Look," she says, "they are all like this."
The tiny shoots are no more than a few centimetres long, but half of them are already shrivelled and drying.
"We need a solution to this problem, if there is not enough rain we'll all have to abandon the fields and go to the towns to find work."
To stop that happening China's government is spending $1bn (£600m) on emergency measures to fight the drought. In practice that means digging wells, and lots of them.
We find a team with a giant rig they have constructed in a field. Four men in blue overalls and red hard hats haul giant metal pipes into place, then drill down.
It will take them several days to dig. But the foreman tells me that this is only a temporary measure, only more rain can solve the basic problem of the drought.
The last well the team completed two days ago produced water for just a few minutes, then nothing more came out.
Deep under the earth China's water, on its arid northern plain, is slowly running out. It is a massive problem and China is only just starting to face up to it.
Long-term problems
Some 200 million people live across the north China plain. It is home to giant cities like Beijing and Tianjin which are expanding fast. But the area has water resources comparable to a desert country and every year as the population swells the water stress grows worse.
Continue reading the main story “ Start Quote The harsh reality is that there is simply not enough water” End Quote Ma Jun Chinese environmentalist
China's industries are inefficient, they consume far more water than those in developed countries. The country's construction boom means water use is even more intensive.
Many of the rivers in the north have dried up. Dams have blocked their normal flow, the water diverted to towns, farms and factories.
The northern megacities now rely on underground water sources for two-thirds of their needs. But the aquifers beneath places like Beijing are being drained, sinking as they are used faster than the rain can replenish them. Some fear the water could be gone in 30 years in places.
Ma Jun is one of China's most prominent environmentalists. Over a decade ago he wrote a book titled China's Water Crisis.
As we walk along one of Beijing's dirty canals he tells me: "In China two-thirds of our cities are short of water.
Shifting water
"But the north China plain, where many of our biggest cities and industries are found, and which is China's breadbasket, is where our water is in shortest supply. So this drought now is making our long-term problems worse."
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The biggest fear of all is that China, now an engine for the global economy, could find that lack of water constrains its future growth.
"There is a growing understanding," Ma Jun says, "that we need to change, that our mode of growth is not sustainable. The harsh reality is that there is simply not enough water."
The country does have huge quantities of water, but they lie far to the south, in the massive rivers that run from west to east, 1,000km away from Beijing and the cities of the north.
So China is pressing ahead with one of the world's biggest engineering schemes to shift the water northwards.
Fond of massive schemes, the country's Communist Party leaders are building the North-South water project, a giant series of canals and pipes to carry water from the Yangtze and Yellow rivers to Beijing. The cost of the project is a staggering $60bn (£36.8bn).
Standing on a giant crane looking down on one of the North-South construction sites you can see hundreds of workers welding and cutting iron bars, building huge metal moulds to make sections of concrete pipe.
Each section is around 10m (33ft) high, 8m (26ft) wide and 30m (99ft) long. When complete the North-South project will deliver the equivalent of 50,000 Olympic-size swimming pools full of water to cities in the north each day.
One of the men overseeing the site tells me that it is a great honour to take part in the project, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a construction engineer.
But the scheme can only be a stopgap. The amount of water it will deliver will buy China time to change and, hopefully, become more efficient.
But it won't be enough to solve the country's water woes. China's thirst is just too great, and unless it alters its ways, millions might find one day, that their water could run dry.
The course of the Yangtze River, China's largest, from north to south. 
Heavy June rainfall has forced China to  evacuate more than 550,000 people from their homes. Massive floods have devastated the central and  southern parts of the country,  causing rivers to overflow their banks and triggering mudslides.  The rains follow the worst  in China in over 50 years, which has decimated  crop yields.  

Overall, 40 rivers have risen above safe limits, stressing  dykes and dams including those on China's largest waterway, the , which is flooding downstream while experiencing a severe drought near its source in the north. 
 
China's disaster level has been raised to four, the highest on the scale. In a statement on its website on Friday, China's  said, "Since June 13, the damage caused by the rainstorms has led to ... the emergency evacuation of 671,200 people to safety."

The current round of heavy rains began in early June. Since then, more than a million and a half people have been displaced in  the central and southern regions of the country and at least 168 deaths have been reported. Meteorologists in  are predicting more heavy rain in  , , and  this weekend.

The government has mobilized its forces to aid in the massive evacuations. According to , local authorities are distributing a box of  and a carton of bottled water to those affected by the flood. But villagers have reported that survival is difficult, especially for those still trapped by the flood waters in small villages, and distribution of aid is slow, with some not receiving any. 

A villager was quoted by Reuters: "To be frank, those rescue boats cannot go through those narrow lanes inside the village. A lot of them depend on their relatives rowing small wooden boats to get to them... It is hard to help these people inside there." Another villager, Shou Pengfei  said, "Some did not even get any relief items. There is no electricity and you get bitten by mosquitoes all the time." 

According to  the Beijing Climate Centre, weather trends have shifted drastically. Currently the  rain is coming in shorter but fiercer bursts, with  protracted periods of drought in between the torrential rain. 
 on the  in 2009. 
The heavy  rainfall is not likely to reduce the crop failure caused by months of drought, especially in the north, the heart of China's grain-growing bread basket, where many rivers have dried up. According to reports, the northern countryside  has been left devastated by the droughts. Huge dams hundreds of meters wide are now small, muddy pools. Large cities such as  are draining the underground water sources and China is facing a long-term water crisis.

Meanwhile, China is engaged in  a huge multi-year engineering project designed to move water to the parched north and away from the flooded south. The North-South water project is a massive series of canals and pipes designed to carry water from the Yangtze and  rivers to Beijing.

It is likely, analysts predict, that Chinese crop shortages will increase food prices worldwide. Even before the latest flooding, the severe drought in the north caused a  shortfall in China's crop yields that will likely  affect the price of wheat and may propel a price increase in global markets.