Guangdong Province, along with a wide swathe of southern and central China, is suffering from the worst drought in more than half a century. This year's long dry spell has ruined thousands of hectares of crops and left more than two million people without adequate running water. Little relief is expected until spring.

Flow from the Dongjiang, or East River, which supplies Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Dongguan, is more than 50 per cent below normal, according to the China Daily. Shenzhen and Dongguan are each running short of more than 500,000 cubic metres of water per day.

Xinhua reported last week that worried residents and companies in Shenzhen are drilling unauthorised wells and undermining building foundations. One home collapsed.

Officials from the city, which Shenzhen newspapers say is one of the nation's seven worst hit, convened a crisis meeting last week to develop a strategy to cope with the shortage and encourage conservation. Dongguan officials say they may soon impose rationing or rotating supply restrictions, according to the Commercial Daily.

In Hong Kong, however, water trucks from the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department rolled down city streets as usual on Monday, hosing down pavements. The SAR reported that the territory's reservoirs are 84.4 per cent full, almost 6 percentage points more than a year ago.

``We have no problem with the water supply to Hong Kong at all,'' Suen Kwok-keung, senior engineer at the Water Supplies Department, said.

Officials from the Water Supply Quality Advisory Committee, who travelled to the Dongjiang on an inspection trip last week, reported back that despite the drought, Guangdong officials ``pledged that the supply to Hong Kong is their first priority'', Suen said.

Though Shenzhen officials said last week that they would approach neighbouring cities for help, Suen said they have not asked for assistance from Hong Kong even though the SAR has an excess allocation of about 60 million cubic metres from the Dongjiang that will be paid for but not needed.

Hong Kong pays six times as much as Shenzhen and Dongguan for Dongjiang water, giving Guangdong a fat financial incentive to favour the SAR as the river's outflow is marketed by Guangdong Investment, a Hong Kong-listed company controlled by the provincial government. The firm recently reported a profit rise of almost 50 per cent and paid its first dividend in five years.

Hong Kong has been paying a provisional price of HK$3.085 per cubic metre for the past three years as SAR and provincial officials have been unable to finalise terms of a new supply agreement. Based on revenue and volume figures reported to shareholders by Guangdong Investment, Shenzhen and Dongguan paid an average of 0.497 Hong Kong cents per cubic metre in the first half of the year, an increase of 0.005 cents on last year.

Despite the drought, factories in Shenzhen and Dongguan report that production has not been affected. Samantha Bowles, spokeswoman for Veolia Water, a French firm operating a joint venture to supply water to central districts of Shenzhen, said: ``The drought has absolutely no affect on our ability to supply drinking water.''

Ominously, however, mainland press reports say that the lowered level of the Dongjiang has led to a backflow of sea water from the river delta which has prevented sewage from washing out to sea and led to complaints of salty drinking water in Dongguan. Suen insisted that Hong Kong water quality has not been affected.

The SAR gets more than 80 per cent of its water from the Dongjiang.