#1: Yes, Shanghai has been pumping ground water for a long, long time. Well, would you put the Suzhou Creek into pipes? Exactly.

#2: Shanghai’s subsidence due to that extraction of groundwater has been known for a very long time.

#3: About 20 years ago, if I remember rightly, quite possibly much earlier, Shanghai started pumping water back into the aquifer to check the subsidence caused by over-extraction of the aquifer.

#4: I first heard about the sheer weight of buildings compressing Shanghai’s land, therefore sinking it, nearly 5 years ago.

#5: Shanghai’s a goner. Combination of global warming, building a city where no sane person would build a sheep pen (Helllo?!?!?!? Coastal marsh!- same applies to Tianjin, Venice and New Orleans), and subsidence caused first by over-exploiting groundwater then by building buildings that should never have been built on such land- won’t be long before tourist boats are leaving Nanjing (and Beijing and whereever’s closest and safest to New Orleans and Venice and many other cities) to take cruises over the sunken ruins of “old Shanghai”.

Which is all, of course, to say that it’s a massive gov’t cover-up for the giant worm.

Have you ever played Gears of War 2? A city also sometimes sinks when the earth under it is being eaten by (spoiler alert!) a GIANT WORM.

Ryan: is there a GIANT WORM under Shanghai?

When they discovered New Orelans was sinking in the 60′s they began to pump out the water with the misguided belief that this would stop the sinking. It had the effect of speeding it up.
Think of a sponge when it’s wet. (It’s bigger) When you suck out the water it shrinks.
Sounds like this happened in Shanghai