Extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and severe in China, testing the increasingly centralized top-down leadership under Chinese leader Xi Jinping and potentially weakening local government responses to such disasters. There is sex.
Floods have also hit one of the country’s most populous and wealthy regions, threatening the country’s uneven economic recovery. A major manufacturing and commercial center, Guangdong Province is home to more than 127 million people and is China’s economic powerhouse.
The region has been hit by heavy rains since Thursday, causing landslides that buried buildings and flooded villages and cities. Provincial authorities issued 148 storm warnings on Sunday and said water levels in the Beijiang River were expected to reach levels not seen in the past 50 years.
Video footage reported by Chinese media showed rescue workers pulling residents from cars and homes and transporting them in dinghies along submerged roads.
More than 82,000 people have been evacuated from their homes, authorities said. The storm left at least 1.16 million households without power and more than 1,000 schools were closed on Monday. On Sunday, at least four weather stations in the region reported record rainfall for April.
State media said communication links with Jiangwan town, Guangdong province, home to about 3,600 people, were cut off by flooding on Sunday and were only partially restored on Monday using satellite connections and drones. Eighty rescuers trekked through the night to reach the area Monday, where several buildings were covered in landslides.
Sunday’s cross-country race was canceled after runners were temporarily trapped in the woods in waist-deep water until they were rescued.
