China is suffering its worst floods in 70 years. The coronavirus has returned, closing the capital because of a strain allegedly more virulent than the one that struck Wuhan. And in parts of eastern Jiangsu there is a fire situation, while in western China a locust problem is emerging.
Chinese media is being heavily censored so it is only possible to get glimpses of what is happening across the country.
A yellow flood warning was issued on Wednesday June 24 – one of many in China in recent days – by Jiangxi Provincial Hydrological Bureau and the eastern province’s Meteorological Observatory.
Forecasters said torrential rain was likely to cause small and medium-sized river floods and heavy flash floods in eastern Shangrao, northern Ganzhou, northwest and southwest Ji’an, plus central Nanchang for 24 hours from 8pm on Wednesday night.
On Tuesday night there was speculation that intense rain over catchment areas that feed into the Yangtze River would cause a giant flood that would test the Three Gorges Dam. But news about the world’s biggest dam is being kept under a tight wrap.
Given the dramas that have already occurred this year. People appear to be speculating on the dire circumstances that have befallen the country – the worst economic crisis since the 1960s and thousands killed by the coronavirus, which flared in Beijing last week and has spread to neighboring provinces.
Videos have emerged on social media showing fish behaving bizarrely – leaping out of rivers into the air en masse. According to Chinese tradition, all that is needed is a major earthquake to signal the fall of the current dynasty.
According to reports from Chinese dissident media, NTD, the Three Gorges Dam opened its floodgates without warning the many millions who live downstream. Yesterday (June 24), China Central Television had a video of Yingshan in Hubei, where the village branch secretary was swept away by the flood on the way to help rescue others.
The Ministry of Water Resources has sent its deputy minister and senior design officials to investigate the dam situation, but as it is all behind a great wall of secrecy it’s hard to know what they are doing.
The authorities have said more than 400 reservoirs have burst their banks, but did not reveal if the Three Gorges was one of these (it has a vast reservoir 600km long). Some villagers have told dissident media outlets that the unannounced overflow of floodwater had killed people while they slept.
Officials promised two weeks ago that they would protect the people in Hubei province from further trauma, given the hardship they endured early this year when Wuhan was the epicentre of the initial Covid-19 outbreak.
Chinese emergency services are on full alert. The last big flood saw the heroes of the PLA celebrated in a state opera. The flooding is widespread across the country. For example, Napo County in Baise City, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region was swamped by the worst flood in a century. Rare heavy rain hit Napo County, causing severe flooding and the whole county was surrounded by water.
According to a video released by netizens, the county has become a vast ocean, with houses and vehicles flooded. Houses were washed away by the flood and some roads collapsed. They said it is the worst flood in nearly 100 years.
Local media reported: “Suddenly, a street turned into a river, and huge waves rolled down carrying a variety of furniture and goods. The rolling doors of some street shops were opened by the flood, and electric cars and other objects in the houses were washed out of the house by the flood. Houses, poorly built, were washed away.”
Napo County is surrounded by mountains, on the southwest border of Guizhou, and connected to Jingxi County in the southeast, and adjacent to Funing County in Yunnan Province in the northwest.
Besides flooding, officials have issued alerts on locusts spreading from Pakistan. The most recent record of locusts in China are mainly from the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and during the early liberation period, locust plagues occurred in Henan, Xinjiang and other places.
But conditions are said to be ripe for locust swarms this year.
In Beijing, the local disease control officials say the current coronavirus strain is much more virulent than the one that hit Wuhan earlier in the year. They estimate it is between two to 10 times more infectious. Roads and other routes out of the city are closed and monitored except to commercial traffic.
Heavy rains over the past three weeks have led to disasters being declared in 24 provinces and municipalities, especially near the upper reaches of the Yangtze River and the Three Gorges Dam.
This is reportedly the largest flooding since 1949 and has caused serious challenges to the world's largest dam.
In Chongqing, authorities dredged 100,000 tonnes of silt overnight as levels rose.
Three Gorges is located in Sandouping Town, near Yichang City in Hubei Province in central China. It is 38 kilometres from the downstream Gezhouba Water Conservancy Project at the eastern end of the Three Gorges Reservoir.
Qijiang Online, the media outlet in the area, quoted Zhao Yunfa, deputy chief engineer of the overflow dispatch communications centre at the Three Gorges Project, who said: "The flood storage capacity of the Three Gorges is limited. Do not pin your hopes on the Three Gorges Dam."
Zhang Shuguang, director of the Three Gorges Corporation Hub Management Bureau, also said that flood control measures for the entire Yangtze River Basin could not rely on a Three Gorges Dam to dominate the flood.
Construction on the dam began in 1994 and ended in 2006 after total investment of about 95.5 billion yuan (US$13.5 billion). The dam itself is 2,335 metres long and has an elevation of 185 metres. The second part of the scheme was a water diversion project. The dam has 32 turbine generator units and power generated by its hydropower station exceeded 100 billion kilowatt hours in 2018, a world record for a single facility.
The dam caused considerable controversy as it displaced over a million people and submerged large areas of the Qutang, Wu and Xiling gorges for about 600km – creating a deep reservoir that ocean-going freighters can navigate for 2,250km inland from Shanghai on the East China Sea to the inland city of Chongqing.
The heavy seasonal rain this month has swamped 24 provinces and municipalities in southern and central China, affecting more than 85 million people and causing damage put at 20.7 billion yuan so far.
Zhang warned that the largest flood since 1949 may occur this year, as rainfall in the dam's catchment area – it has a reservoir up to 600km long – upstream of the dam poses a serious challenge.
Many plateaus in southwestern Sichuan Province have experienced heavy rain for 24 hours since June 16, and this was expected to continue in some parts of Sichuan until the 23rd (today).
Heavy rain in the upper reaches of the Qinhuai River in Jiangsu Province over the past few days totalled about 280 millimetres, which is equivalent to about 280 litres per square metre (or 11 inches on the old scale). This prompted authorities to issue strong rainfall warnings.
The State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters, which is in charge of national flood control and drought relief work, said that from the 15th, floods had struck 852 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities in Guangdong, Guangxi, Hunan, Jiangxi, Guizhou, and Chongqing, causing 7,300 houses to collapse.
The Ministry of Water Resources said that 148 rivers had exceeded warning levels. For the first time in history the Chongqing section of the Qijiang River Basin issued a red warning, signifying a flood of more than 10 meters.
An estimated 400 million people live downstream of the Three Gorges Dam.
By Chris Gill on June 23 2020 for the Asia Times (Singpore).
