Wang Shucheng, minister of water resources, issued the grim warning at a national conference for directors of water resources bureau in the eastern city of Suzhou, the Xinhua news agency said.

"Currently, 300 million Chinese people are drinking unsafe water, among which 190 million are drinking water with harmful substances above set standards," Wang said.

The Chinese government has allocated more than 18 billion yuanbillion US dollars) to build 800,000 drinking water projects in rural areas since 2000 and has set the lofty goal of providing safe drinking water to every rural family by 2020, although it has yet to work out how it will do so.

But many people in the countryside still lack safe drinking water, Zhai Haohui, vice-minister of water resources, was quoted as saying.

"More than 63 million peasants living in north, northwest, northeast and east China plains are drinking water with fluorine above set standard," he said.

Fluorine is a toxic chemical element.

In addition, 60 million people in 110 counties of Hunan, Hubei, Jiangxi, Anhui, Jiangsu, Sichuan and Yunan provinces are threatened by schistosomiasis, a parasitic disease, Zhai said.

One Of North China's Largest Lakes Dries Up

In other news effecting China's freshwater, one of the countrys' largest northern lakes has dried up, threatening the survival of rare birds, state media said Wednesday Anguli Nur lake, in Hebei province neighboring Beijing, was once four meters (13 feet) deep and covered 6,000 hectares (14,820 acres), the Xinhua news agency said.

But continuous drought and over-exploitation of water by the Bashang area of nearby Zhangjiakou city caused the lake to dry up, Xinhua said.

Lack of water in the lake will likely endanger 10,000 hectares of surrounding grassland, local residents said.

For centuries the lake also served as a major habitat of birds and fish, including some rare species of aquatic birds, the report said.

The area was an imperial summer resort and hunting ground more than 1,000 years ago.

All rights reserved. � 2004 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.

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