As a part of the National Museum of China’s ongoing effort to share important pieces from the digital archive on weather modification, we are pleased to share this excerpt of a speech given by the late scientist and government official, Dr. Xu Shengshui, entitled “Seeding the Rains of Rao”, delivered on July 9, 2065.

“On March 25th 2045, three district level officials were speaking to an audience of middle school students in Rao District. These officials were telling the students how they helped advance cloud seeding science to alleviate the drought of 2045. However, they began by explaining where they were during the drought of 2030. The first explained that in 2030 she was a middle school student who loved biology and learning about how plants grew, and who since then had begun a career addressing water use practices for agriculture in the district where she had been a junior official for the past five years. The second official had started his career in the office monitoring industrial water use efficiency and pollution levels and confronted the supply constraints the drought was causing for industrial plant access to water and anxious to discover plausible palliatives. And the third speaker was a mid-career local official that was part of the team managing municipal level water and waste management facilities of the district in 2030, who was worried about having adequate levels of water for human needs. At the time, she wasn't sure how she and other officials responsible for managing their water responsibilities could agree on their access to local water supplies while at the same time meet the guidelines set by the authorities at the county level. Into her office on a warm and dry fall day came a recent graduate from the provincial technical university’s atmospheric sciences program who said he had an idea for how cloud seeing could increase the locally available water that could come from creating additional snowfall that winter. Basically he was proposing increasing locally available water supplies to make the strain of water scarcities less dire for all sectors of use. She scrambled to approach the county for special permission to enable the experiment; county leadership agreed with the experiment well aware that if proven promising the county could take up a cloud seeding program, at least in those parts of the county that could have conditions meriting such an effort. As it turned out the district’s success at alleviating drought-induced water scarcity, and for working with the other officials managing different water uses in the district, sent the county onto the path of cloud seeding that it had developed up to the year 2045. After the presentation to the school, and some obligatory group photos, a mid-level official approached them. He said he was visiting a sick relative and heard about this event and came to listen and now wanted them to have tea with him—having read his name card all three knew they were about to have an important cup of tea.

Meanwhile, waiting for his invited guests to arrive, Lao Zhang was in the provincial governor’s office where the 2045 megadrought was weighing heavy on his mind. Given that water scarcity was such a binding limitation on people’s livelihoods and wellbeing, he was working hard to make any progress in addressing the drought. Having been briefed on the main findings of the white paper he commissioned on water management strategies for moving forward he was struck by the recent advances in cloud seeding technologies and wondered how best to take advantage of the possibilities such technologies enabled. That’s why he sent me — a mid-level official, called Xiao Xu at the time — to listen to the three officials who were speaking to the middle school students, and to invite them to a meeting.

Eventually, I arrived with my three guests to the provincial office. At the conference table with tea served, Lao Zhang praised the group, saying that they were an effective, informal team, each with different responsibilities—and were an example of how the governance system could work well to face the challenges of water scarcity. Lao Zhang wanted to make Rao District a model for “helping heaven” care for the earth by bringing rain. This was after all implementing new scientific possibilities that just a couple centuries before had officials at different levels of the bureaucracy all praying for rain — but only with hope and faith. Lao Zhang went on to say he was launching a campaign for all counties in the province to formulate proposals to test the feasibility of cloud seeding in their jurisdictions and to learn new governance approaches. He specifically wanted the counties to learn from the three water officials through a study tour that the three would lead. He wanted officials across the province to learn how their offices could better coordinate how to provide more water. Lao Zhang wanted to see everyone in his province gain what blessings cloud seeding could offer to people’s livelihoods and wellbeing. He hoped people on the other side of the world were trying as hard as well.

Now, our three officials from Rao District were not expecting to lead a study for the provincial government, but they dove headfirst into the task. They had one week to prepare and the resources of the province at their disposal. Quite quickly, interest grew and the requests for site visits to be included on the study tour increased — with many locations eager to host the study tour. The three officials decided that the first step should not be a large venue, with banners showing the successes of great individuals. Rather, they decided to visit the county cloud seeding facility, specifically to talk with the local technicians and farmers. They wanted to begin the tour with hearing about the operatives working together day in, and day out, alongside the farmers whose livelihoods depended on the water.

So, the day of the study tour arrived and the caravan of county and provincial leaders descended on the Rao District Precipitation Enhancement Battalion #8. It was there that Lao Zhang saw the gleam of excitement, and camaraderie, in the eyes of the technicians. And the entire group heard about why the facility, and the county, were so successful.

The technician said, “We’re not operating a dam, or a power plant here. It's not a simple question of optimization. We are thinking of the overall success of our District. Other battalions are responsible for increasing wintertime precipitation in the mountains, so that we have more snow. Here, we are responsible for liquid precipitation — rainfall. And to understand how best to seed the sky, we need to work with many groups, who often have different priorities.”

The technicians went on explaining how they discussed the overall strategy for rainfall control. The farmers who were present also spoke up and shared how they contributed to the efforts of Battalion #8.

When the technicians and farmers had completed their presentation, Lao Zhang shared his thoughts with the group, which I am paraphrasing here; making rain isn’t a product to expect a private enterprise or even a state owned enterprise to provide because the rationality of decision making isn’t based on enterprise success— we are not meeting a market demand but supplying a human need across diverse purposes that must be jointly coordinated as part of political governance. That is how our society is managing to meet the stresses of water scarcity with the deployment of the best science through effective governance principles and practices. I think we are all grateful to be in a world where, whatever the shared global environment challenges societies across the world are confronting, at least we aren’t locked in the long-standing bickering about whose social, political and economic practices are better—everyone recognizes the shared need to find specific paths toward creating water security.

The rest of the study tour went completely as planned. The only unexpected outcome was that my own interest and career changed dramatically. I continued working with those same three talented water management officials for the next 20 years, learning how to harness scientific management of the weather — to help heaven care for the Earth. This career culminated in my contribution to ending the megadrought of 2060. But that is a different story, and longer in the telling. 

Thank you.

Dr. Xu ShengShui, July 9, 2065.

For more information, please visit the National Museum’s digital archive where the full catalog of texts, speeches, and poetry by Dr. Xu Shengshui is available.