China is planning an incredible geo-engineering effort that would see nature re-worked for the benefit of agriculture.

The huge and complex project is aiming to create three separate routes from different points on the Yangtze River.

The routes would be used to deliver 45 billion cubic metres of water a year across 4350 kilometres of canals and tunnels to the Beijing and northern area.

Officials hope to use some of the water supplies from the lush southern regions to douse the hugely-populated north.

The massive project officially began over ten years ago, but will take 50 years to build at a cost of close to AU$90 billion.

The project will require feats of engineering such as the blasting of channels through mountains in prominent earthquake zones across the Tibetan plateau.

The plan has not been undertaken lightly, and the needs of the north must be met somehow.

The project’s official website reportedly carries a blessing from the past in the form of a Mao Zedong quote, who said in 1952;

“The south has a lot of water. The north has little. If possible, lending some water would be okay.”

There have been troubles on the project almost matching the scale of the effort itself.

Early tests to redirect part of the river reportedly saw inflow polluting lakes and destroying fish in the eastern province of Shandong, though authorities reject the claims of local villagers.

Some say they have been deprived of the livelihoods and forced from their lands due to the polluted waterways already created.

One village had just filled its area with the AU$8700 worth of fish fry that it could afford for the year, when polluted water annihilated the fresh stock.

Residents said authorities paid them just a tenth of the cost in compensation, arrested three locals and told the rest not to speak about it.

Other challenges include the possibility of pollution along any part of the channel system. Engineers also face the task of moving billions of litres of water uphill for large sections, which will require a huge amount of reservoirs and pumps.

Local media has blamed the lack of funding for anti-pollution measure for the likelihood that five rivers feeding that route’s main source, the Danjiangkou reservoir, are “unlikely” to meet cleanliness standards.

Experts say the project is unnecessary, and geared in the wrong direction.

“It’s actually a very prolonged, very tortuous process that probably should have been killed off a long time ago,” Harvard research fellow Scott Moore said.

“It would be more effective in the long run to try to tackle the demand side rather than just to try to increase the supply.”