Who’s to Blame for China’s Floods?

Recently, Typhoon Dusuray has continued its northward march through China, and this round of extremely heavy rainfall has already caused major casualties in Beijing and the surrounding Hebei region, as well as power outages, road outages, and communication outages in many areas.  Although the Chinese government has activated its emergency response mechanism to deal with the extreme weather, which is extremely intense and poses a high risk of disaster, people are still relying on self-help and mutual aid. According to official data, at least 20 people have been killed and hundreds of thousands of others have been stranded in the disaster area.

A natural disaster?

Typhoons mostly arrive in China from the south and east coast and weaken quickly after entering the mainland. Rain falls mostly in coastal provinces and rarely affects inland areas, and it is extremely rare for a typhoon to hit Beijing. According to an analysis by the microblogging site China Meteorology Fans, the cause of the heavy rainfall in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region this time was the impact of a large-scale typhoon hitting the mountains in northern China, which led to extremely serious consequences.
In addition to the impact of the residual circulation of moderate typhoon Dusuray, another moderate typhoon Kanu in the northwest Pacific Ocean is transporting water to the region, resulting in an increase in moisture in the plains of northern China, which has exacerbated the heavy rainfall. The heavy rainfall will only subside when the residual circulation of Dusurrei has dissipated. Ma Xueqian, chief forecaster of the China Central Meteorological Observatory (CCMO), said “extreme and rare”, which can be realized from five aspects of the rainfall extremes: the long duration of heavy rainfall, the large area of influence, the large cumulative rainfall, the extreme rainfall in localities, and the obvious characteristics of topographic distribution, with the rainfall process lasting for more than 72 hours. These analyses seem to point to the occurrence of flooding as a natural disaster, something that cannot be resisted.

Or was it a man-made disaster? Catchment or drainage?

As of the beginning of this month, Beijing had relocated more than 50,000 affected people during the current round of heavy rainfall. In just four days since the typhoon landed, the maximum cumulative rainfall in Beijing and its surrounding areas has reached nearly 1,000 millimetres, and 358 roads in Beijing have been affected or damaged by the storm; this heavy rainfall has even caused the Forbidden City, which is claimed to be unaffected by rainfall in 600 years, to be flooded. The heavy rainfall surpassed Beijing’s record of “721” rainfall in 2012, which killed 79 people. Xia Ming, a professor of political science at the City University of New York, said in an interview that over the past four decades, the Communist Party of China (CPC) authorities have been developing “face-saving projects” in a “hasty manner” while neglecting infrastructure such as water systems and that ultimately the hidden dangers will be exposed in the event of a disaster.

On July 21, 2012, Beijing experienced the largest rainstorm since weather records began in 1951, killing 79 people and causing up to A$2.45 billion in economic losses. 2021, from July 17 to 23, Henan Province in China suffered severe flooding from unusually heavy rainfall. The floods caused 398 deaths and missing people, with direct economic losses amounting to A$25.23 billion, and attracted international attention. Flooding is not a one-off phenomenon, as it occurs in cities across China every year during the summer months when it rains. Flooding is not a one-off phenomenon, and this is closely related to the Chinese government’s ongoing campaign to build “sponge cities”, a flood management system. A policy that was originally designed to avoid floods by requiring cities to be built not with drainage in mind, but with a range of green measures to collect drainage to replenish groundwater. It’s just that when climate change comes when typhoons or heavy rainfall disasters brought about by climate change become more frequent and more intense, sponge cities are not a good idea.
Yes, the development of cities, more people, droughts bring insufficient water, collecting drainage water to replenish groundwater can solve the problem of drought, but such urban planning and construction, whether it can be quickly drained away from the lowlands when there is a short period of extremely heavy rainfall, is questionable, “rare” floods occur in this case. The lack of a sense of crisis and the lack of water are the problems that may arise from the rapid development of China’s infrastructure.
This is exactly the kind of problem that can arise from China’s rapid development.
In addition, China’s overall mindset in recent decades has been one of economic development, and corruption under the authoritarian model has resulted in many tofu-dreg projects. Now, with all the changes in the climate, many problems have come to light – many infrastructures have to be not only built but more importantly, maintained. Many people have criticized China has not paid much attention to the management and maintenance of infrastructure. While construction is the hardware, management is the soft engineering, which requires more comprehensive planning of the society as a whole, as well as the investment of human resources to explore different possible scenarios and make preparations in case of emergency. How urban design can become more resilient to disasters, and how local governments can be better prepared after each year’s floods are things that the Chinese government should be considering but has been slow to do. Every time a disaster occurs, the failure to follow the emergency response mechanism to avoid danger, or the inadequacy of the original infrastructure to withstand natural disasters, can not help but be called a man-made disaster.

Protecting Beijing and the Xiongan New Area is a top priority.

Flooding caused by extremely heavy rainfall in Beijing and Hebei has been going on for a week. Due to heavy rainfall and upstream flooding, roads in the worst-hit area of Zhuozhou, Hebei Province, have been flooded, with water depths of up to more than 10 meters. According to China’s Southern Weekly, the flooding has caused the water level to rise rapidly, but Zhuozhou residents have not received any official evacuation notice, leaving many villages stranded. A number of civilian rescue teams applied to Zhuozhou’s local emergency management bureau for a letter of authorization, but were refused on the grounds that the official seal of the government that issued the letter had been “soaked and could not be found”. According to the introduction of the Hebei Province Water Resources Department, many strands of water are converging in Zhuozhou, greatly affecting the local flood control, and it is predicted that 300 million to 400 million cubic meters of water will have to cross the border of Zhuozhou in the later period. Although the water level of the river continues to fall, it will take some time for the water in the flood storage area to recede. It is expected that the water will recede in a week in a place with high terrain, and it will take about one month in a place with low terrain.

A few days ago, China’s Minister of Water Resources Li Guoying said he wanted to ensure the absolute safety of flood control in the capital Beijing and Daxing airport, as well as in the new Xiongan district. After the heavy rains finally stopped last Tuesday, it became clear that most of Beijing was not the worst affected area, but that was partly because officials had diverted the floodwaters elsewhere to protect the city. In Hebei province, next to Beijing, officials opened flood gates and spillways in seven low-lying flood storage areas in the province to prevent rivers and reservoirs in Beijing and Tianjin from overflowing. Ni Yuefeng, the party secretary of Hebei, said he had ordered the orderly opening of the flood storage areas to ease the pressure on Beijing’s flood defences and was determined to act as a “moat” for the capital. These political statements inevitably made the local residents of Zhuozhou chilled and even angry.

At the same time, the flooding of Zhuozhou is also directly related to the protection of the Xiong’an New Area. Xiong’an New Area was formally established on April 1, 2017, and is located in the Daqing River system in the Haihe River Basin, with Baiyangdian, the largest freshwater lake in northern China, under the jurisdiction of Xiong’an New Area. The official positioning of Xiong’an New Area is “a major plan for the millennium and a national event”. Early in the construction of Xiongan New Area, academician Lu Da Dao, a famous Chinese economic geographer, wrote an article pointing out the poor conditions of Xiongan’s living environment. He analyzed that in the event of a serious flood, Baiyangdian might have to be released, and Xiongan would be the first to bear the brunt. In order to protect the downstream of Xiongan, Hebei flood release chose to cut off the flood water in the middle of the flow, man-made to prevent the natural smooth downward drainage, creating a large floodplain. Zhuozhou was the first to suffer.
In a democratic society, everyone has the right to fight for their own protection. To sacrifice other places in order to protect the Xiongan New Area would be unthinkable in Western societies, because the officials who made the decision would be held accountable, and no official would be willing to take on such a responsibility. However, when the will of the party is at the centre of everything, rather than the interests of the people, these decisions

form a culture in the bureaucracy, and officials at all levels of the government will be held to this standard, resulting in flooding in areas that should not have been affected today.

Public Grievances

However, compared to more mature Western democracies, it must be said that the Chinese people are very tolerant of their leaders. It is only natural that there will be discontent. Compared to Xi’s predecessors Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, Li Qiang’s predecessors Zhu Rongji and Wen Jiabao, all have a tradition of comforting the victims of disasters – whenever there are big floods or big earthquakes, they are always there. But since Xi Jinping took over, this tradition has completely changed. Some netizens recalled the massive floods that swept through many southern Chinese provinces and cities for weeks in 2019, but there was no sign of Xi Jinping. The most unforgettable thing for some netizens is still the outbreak of the Wuhan epidemic in early 2020. The city of Wuhan was sealed off, the people were in deep water, and the people were eagerly looking forward to the condolences of the central leadership, it was not until 48 days after the closure of the city that Xi Jinping inspected Wuhan, and the people did not have the chance to get close to it, and the security measures were excessive, and it was satirized as a “visit turned into a distant look, and condolences turned into a video”.

Until the 5th, it has been more than a week since torrential rains and floods hit the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and northeastern regions, and Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing rushed to Tianjin to guide the flood relief efforts. The Xinhua News Agency’s report also deliberately highlighted the fact that the visit was “commissioned by Xi Jinping”, which is quite a bit of an attempt to appease the people’s grievances. On Weibo and WeChat, public grievances are on the verge of blowing up, with netizens asking why the official authorities have shifted the blame for the flooding to the torrential rain. Why should Hebei and Tianjin act as Beijing’s moats? Some have also pointed fingers at the highest level, saying that the Politburo Standing Committee went to visit experts on summer vacation in Beidaihe before visiting the victims around them. On China’s social media platform Weibo, the trending topics “Hebei Party Secretary Says Determined to Protect City River” and “Hebei Party Secretary Says Determined to Protect Beijing City River” have been blocked. The banning was based on “relevant laws, regulations and policies”. Some media accounts have also closed their comment sections under the relevant news.

It has been said that popular discontent is like a flood that can never be overcome. In the history of Western countries, it is not uncommon that the stupidity of leaders ignoring public opinion leads to public discontent, and ultimately to the downfall of a regime. Resistance movements triggered by economic crises that made people’s lives difficult have led to the downfall of most regimes. However, China now has the impression that it has become a society where everyone is under surveillance, and the chances of public grievances turning into protests are not high. Most Chinese people have psychologically accepted the need to live in misery rather than demanding change from the government.
However, there are those who believe that suppressing public grievances will not solve the problem but will only suppress the problem for a while, which will only build up more momentum for the next crisis.

Conclusion

The various disasters that have occurred in China in recent years have demonstrated to the world that the government is extremely incapable of correcting mistakes at the source. Before embarking on any project, government officials are often “top-heavy”, failing to comprehensively envision the possible future hazards to the public and society, failing to have adequate emergency response mechanisms, and even failing to make real preparations. There are so many lessons from the past, but when disaster strikes, the public still relies on mutual aid and self-help. The Taiwanese writer LUNG Ying-tai once said, “To test whether a country or a city is well-developed, a single rain is enough – because you can see the skyscrapers but not the sewers. You have to wait for heavy rain to see its true colours. The flooding has obviously revealed more than just the deficiencies of the flood prevention projects.

Article/Editorial Department
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