China’s summer hit by devastating floods shows tough challenges in battling extreme weather

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Last month, temperatures soared in parts of central China’s agricultural heartland as farmers struggled with days of no rain.

In sweltering heat in Henan province, many people rushed to irrigate parched crops during what is normally a critical growing season, and authorities ordered restrictions on water use and artificial cloud cover to induce rain, state media reported.

But just a month later, parts of the state were hit by floods, with torrential rains inundating tens of thousands of acres of farmland and forcing more than 100,000 people to evacuate, according to state media.

Parts of Nanyang, the hardest-hit city in Henan province, received more than 600 millimeters (about 24 inches) of rain in 24 hours — three-quarters of what would normally be expected in a year. Online footage showed rescuers navigating roads in speedboats and wading through waist-high water to pull people from their homes.

This is happening all across China, where deadly floods and landslides have hit several provinces over the past two weeks, blocking highways, destroying homes, destroying crops and livestock, causing devastating economic losses and forcing tens of thousands of people to flee.

The sudden shift from dry weather to floods highlights a major challenge for the Chinese government, as emergency response and recovery become the norm and extreme weather events are expected to become more frequent due to human-induced climate change.

The double whammy of flooding in Henan province and surrounding areas last week, combined with dry, hot weather and flooding in the space of a few weeks, has led to an already devastating spell of extreme weather across China that is expected to continue.

Torrential rains have battered the southern, central and eastern parts of the country, triggering a massive emergency response operation that began the flood season about two months earlier than usual and only peaked last week.

China’s Communist Party acknowledged the urgency of the situation in a statement last week after a landmark meeting of party officials led by President Xi Jinping, pledging to “improve measures to monitor, prevent and control natural disasters, especially floods.”

In recent years, the government has grown increasingly wary of domestic risks from climate change, including droughts and floods in areas crucial to the country’s grain supply, potentially affecting food security.

China, the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter, has sought to position itself as a leader in the global transition to green energy, even as it faces challenges in moving away from coal due to growing electricity demand.

Meanwhile, authorities are scrambling to respond to the latest crisis and heavily indebted local governments are struggling to recover amid China’s stagnant economy and growing social discontent with the country’s direction.

China’s Ministry of Emergency Management said on July 12 that even before last week’s floods, direct economic losses from natural disasters had reached about $13 billion so far this year, affecting 32 million people.

“I couldn’t sleep at all last night,” one farmer from Nanyang city in Henan province said as he surveyed his flooded farmland in a video posted on social media and shared by government-linked accounts.

“A year’s worth of hard work has gone to waste.”

Heavy rains have pounded central China in recent days, with reports of damage and devastation to lives circulating on social media and in local media.

At least 34 people have been killed in floods and landslides since last weekend, including 15 killed in a bridge collapse caused by flash floods and heavy rains in Shaanxi province on Friday. This comes after floods and landslides killed at least 71 people in southern China late last month.

Videos posted on social media showed farmers in Sichuan province wading through chest-high water to harvest corn, apparently determined not to lose their crop.

Meanwhile, a farmer in flood-hit Hunan province told state Agriculture TV that he lost more than 800 pigs and suffered about $275,000 in damages after his barn was flooded this month.

Retailers and farmers have also taken to social media to sell flooded crops at discounted prices, a last resort for many to try to save income in a country where studies have shown insurance coverage is weaker than in other major economies.

Ten states were under emergency flood warnings as of Sunday, with more heavy rains expected in the coming days, according to national weather officials.

The typhoon, which struck China’s Hainan island on Monday, is expected to make landfall on the Chinese mainland as a tropical storm on Tuesday, while a cyclone that may strengthen into a typhoon is expected to hit China’s coastal waters later this week, according to CNN Weather.

China has launched a top-down effort to reform its response to recent extreme weather events after floods in the city of Zhengzhou, Henan province, killed more than 300 people in 2021. And meteorologists issued a stark warning earlier this month, calling China a “hotspot where the effects of climate change will be severely felt.”

Observers say authorities have made progress, particularly in early warning and response, weather monitoring and building certain infrastructure, but they also say China, like many countries grappling with climate change, needs to do more to prepare for the impacts of more frequent extreme weather events.

“While policies and strategies have been developed and implemented, the pace and scale of action is often below what is needed to effectively mitigate the risks and impacts of climate change,” said Hongjian Xu, an adjunct research fellow at the Australian National University.

These needs are likely to be greater in remote, rural and mountainous areas with large vulnerable elderly populations and fewer resources, as well as provinces that historically are less susceptible to severe flooding, such as China’s northeastern grain-producing regions that were hit by heavy rains last year.

Guangtao Hu, professor of hydrological informatics at the University of Exeter in the UK, said while governments are investing in water infrastructure to improve flood protection, there are “huge gaps” in investment to maintain the existing system.

The urgency was underscored earlier this month when China’s second-largest freshwater lake burst its banks after 17 days of heavy rains, flooding about 20 square miles of land and forcing the evacuation of at least 7,000 people, according to official reports.

Another challenge, experts say, is stepping up recovery from the severe floods that have damaged farmland, destroyed homes and devastated livelihoods – a recovery that could take months.

Local governments generally manage reconstruction efforts, with the central government in charge of planning and funding, but there have been cases of misappropriation of state reconstruction funds, such as after the devastating floods in Zhengzhou in 2021.

And according to data from global insurer Munich Re, of the $25 billion in damages caused by Typhoon Doksuri in China last summer, only about 8% was covered by insurance.

“Farmland will need to be re-plowed and it will take months to fully restore the soil quality,” said Li Chao, a senior researcher at Greenpeace East Asia in Beijing. “As for housing, households will need to spend a lot of money on rebuilding. It’s very difficult just to recover from this kind of disaster.”

People living in areas at risk of flooding also face difficult choices as their risks increase, she added.

“Maybe in the future we’ll see what decision people make,” she said. “Will they migrate to safer places? Or will they return to their villages and rebuild?”