How do irrigation and groundwater use support farming around Beijing?

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Map of eastern Asia highlighting China and its neighboring countries, with an arrow pointing to Beijing Municipality in northeastern China. The map includes international boundaries, disputed borders, and lines of control, and shows major surrounding countries such as Russia, Mongolia, India, Japan, North Korea, and South Korea. An inset at the bottom left shows the location of China within Asia. — Beijing Beijing city and municipality, China.

Agriculture remains a significant part of the economy in Beijing, where a specialized belt encircling the city supports intensive farming to ensure a steady supply of produce.1

To sustain this production in a region prone to frequent droughts, farmers utilize a network of irrigation channels fed by reservoirs. Because these channels do not provide sufficient water, they are supplemented by numerous wells that extract significant quantities of groundwater. While these combined measures have successfully enabled consistent vegetable and fruit cultivation, the heavy reliance on groundwater has caused the local water table to drop significantly.1