But a closer look reveals that it’s far from certain whether the benefits will outweigh costs: Some describe the project as a “high-risk gamble.” And rather than showing off the power of China’s central government, in many ways the project merely highlights the limitations of the central government’s ability to manage China’s water needs.

Quartz

The project creates a grid of water highways that criss-cross the country and can be adjusted to send water almost anywhere. That grid—the siheng sanzong, literally the “four horizontals, three verticals”—consists of the Yangtze, Yellow, Huai, and Hai Rivers running west to east, and three routes that run from south to north, each longer than 1,500 kilometers (600 miles) through both natural and man-made canals.

The first branch, the eastern route, has just started transferring water from the Yangtze River in Jiangsu province to the dry cities in Shandong province. A second route will start carrying water from central China to Beijing and other northern cities at some point in 2014. The third, western route may link the Yangtze River to the Yellow River by crossing through the mountainous terrain of Sichuan and Qinghai, at elevation of between 3,000 and 5,000 meters.

Borrowing water from the south isn’t as simple as Mao suggested. The government has so far relocated at least 345,000 people to make way for construction, the largest resettlement for an infrastructure project since at least 1.4 million people were moved for the Three Gorges Dam. Officials say their relocation is a sacrifice for the good of the country, but others argue that the government is overlooking the extent and impact of the forced relocations that are taking place. The diversion project also risks long-term damage to two of China’s most important rivers, along with the communities that depend on them.

About 1,400 kilometers south of Beijing and its dried-up Wanquan River is the ancient town of Xiangyang, best known as the setting for epic battles over control of southern China over 700 years ago. Today, stretches of newly paved highways dotted with half-built high-rise apartment buildings lead to the city of 5 million. Locals brag that their strip of the Han River has some of the best water in the country. Of China’s six levels of water quality, theirs is of the second highest level, crisp and clean enough for drinking—a rarity in a country where as many as 20 percent of rivers are so polluted they’re unsafe to even touch. Over the summer, traffic near the river shore jams around 6 p.m. as people stream to the water for a quick bathe before dinner.

That may change once the central route of the water transfer system opens next year. About 30 percent of the Danjiangkou Reservoir will then go north instead of flowing south toward Xiangyang and into the Yangtze River—the river that supplies water to the diversion project’s eastern route, and eventually the western one as well. Officials say any impact will be minimal, but local environmentalists and researchers dispute that. Worse, some say, is that diverting this much water may permanently hurt two of China’s most important rivers: the Han, the main source of water for about 30 million people, and the Yangtze, which runs through 11 provinces and supports up to 400 million people.