The Three Red Lines and China's Water Resources Policy in the Twenty-First Century

David Lampton (2014), former long-time President of the National Committee on United States–China Relations, observes that Chinese leaders at both central and local levels have the same ‘nightmares’ that can keep them awake at night. By far most of these are domestic: (1) the peasantry, population and food; (2) workers and urban-industrial issues, including the environment; (3) economic growth and volatility; and (4) disasters, natural and manmade. They worry not only about the problems themselves but forming and, even more, implementing policies to address them effectively in a ‘fragmented authoritarian’ state that is far-flung, often gridlocked in a complex matrix (tiaokuai) of authority and personal relations (guanxi), and that is becoming increasingly pluralistic, divisive and often out of effective control of either the bureaucracy or the rule of law.