BEIJING — A coastal desalination plant planned for east of Beijing could provide a large portion of the drinking water for the parched Chinese capital by 2019, the state news media quoted officials as saying on Tuesday. The reports indicated that the government and state enterprises were investing heavily in desalination projects to alleviate a dire water shortage in northern China.

The reports, citing officials who spoke over the weekend and on Monday, said that the proposed plant, to be located in the city of Tangshan in Hebei Province, had already been approved by a provincial development agency. The plan is to complete construction of the plant by 2019 and for it to supply one million tons of fresh water each day, which could account for one-third of the water consumption of Beijing, a city of more than 22 million people, officials said. A headline on an article published by Global Times, a populist state-run newspaper, said, “Seawater to Supply Beijing in 2019.”

The plant would be the core of one of the biggest desalination projects in China. It is the second phase of a desalination project that is run by Aqbewg, a joint venture company formed by Aqualyng, a Norwegian company, and Beijing Enterprises Water Group, which has its headquarters in Hong Kong and is a subsidiary of a large state-owned company.

The first phase of the project, a plant east of Beijing in a district of Tangshan called Caofeidian, already produces about 50,000 tons of water each day for the district’s use, officials said. The water comes from Bo Hai, a body of water just off the Yellow Sea in northeastern China. The second, larger plant would cost an estimated $1.1 billion, and the pipelines to Beijing, about 170 miles long, would cost $1.6 billion, the state news media reports said.