LAUSR

ABSTRACT Water, technology, society and the environment: interpreting the technopolitics of China’s South–North Water Transfer Project. Regional Studies. This paper engages with Michael Webber’s inspirational and provocative interpretation of the technopolitics of China’s South–North Water Transfer Project (SNWTP). The SNWTP was originally conceived out of a special view of human–environment relations so different from the logics of the demand–supply equilibrium. The project was promoted by the post-Mao regime as a means to cope with economic downturn. Its challenges to existing institutions should not be overstated out of its political proportion. Its detrimental environmental impacts are not surprising enough to justify alternatives. The SNWTP provides an interesting case with which to understand the sophisticated interrelationship between water infrastructure, technology, society and environment.