Extreme Measures for Extreme Weather

For three days, a torrential downpour pounded Wangmo, a small mountainous county in southwest China's Guizhou Province. The June 3-5 rains triggered devastating floods that claimed 20 lives. More than 30 people went missing and countless homes and farms were destroyed.

A day prior, local farmers were busy figuring out ways to alleviate the drought that had plagued their home villages for five months. Then the rains came.

Currently extreme weather phenomena like this are damaging the economies and people's lives along the Yangtze River region across south China.

On June 6, Chen Lei, Minister of Water Resources and deputy head of the Office of State Flood Control and Drought Relief (SFDH), called on local governments to closely monitor weather changes and keep emergency relief teams on standby.

Such is the problem facing south China: A complete absence of rainwater followed by sheer inundation presenting challenges for local governments as they hurry to solve the dilemma of alleviating drought while draining flooded areas.

A Sharp Turn

Rain was scarce along the Yangtze River this spring, and the resulting drought caused water levels to drop to record lows.

Statistics from the SFDH said by May 29, the acreage of drought-affected farmland nationwide had reached 6.96 million hectares. In Jiangsu, Anhui, Jiangxi, Hubei and Hunan—the five provinces on the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, local rainfall decreased 40 to 60 percent year on year, the lowest since 1951. The accumulated inflows of major tributaries on the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River decreased 10 to 70 percent between January and May.

In May, the Central Government allocated 2.337 billion yuan (US$360.65 million) to the five provinces for drought relief. The SFDH head also sent out experts to inspect and guide their drought relief efforts. But the rainstorm in early June caught them off guard.

The early June downpours, while destructive, helped ease the drought in the region, decreasing the drought-hit area by 39.2 percent and lowering the drought-affected population by 1.68 million to 2.15 million by June 6.

The positive effects of the rainfall, however, were overshadowed by the following floods that hit hard some regions in Hunan and Guizhou Provinces.

Lingering Impact

The worries about local people's drinking water and navigation on the Yangtze River that were so abundant during the drought were washed away with the rainfall, but the drought's impact on agriculture and animal husbandry remains.

A Xinhua News Agency report said the drought has seriously affected farming along the Yangtze River, with Yunnan Province's farming industry suffering the most. About 86 percent of its farmland was hit by the drought, with the harvests of 3.07 billion hectares to be wiped out. Output of spring grains in the province is expected to decrease 50 percent, while that of sugar cane will decrease 20 percent. In addition, 2.55 million hectares of forests and orchards were affected, causing a loss of 600,000 kg of fruit production, a direct economic loss of 5.04 billion yuan (US$775.4 million).

Prices of some agricultural products have soared because of the drought. As Yunnan is a major sugar cane-producing area in China, the drought has driven up sugar cane prices for four consecutive months, which, in turn, has forced manufacturers in the food industry to raise the prices for their products.

Some places in the five drought-affected provinces on the middle and lower reaches of the Yangze River have yet to be lifted from the aftermath. Prices of rice, vegetables and freshwater products from these regions have all increased, which has weighed on inflationary concerns in the domestic market.

Compared with the drought, the floods hit a larger area and population. By June 7, the floods had affected 438,200 people in Guizhou, with more than 98,300 having been relocated and more than 50 reported dead or missing. About 19,849 hectares of farmland experienced some degree of flooding, with 9,687 hectares completely destroyed. The floods also damaged 5,956 houses and collapsed 2,804 homes.

The National Disaster Reduction Committee and the Ministry of Civil Affairs updated the level-4 national disaster emergency response plan to level 5 on June 7. Jiang Li, Vice Minister of Civil Affairs, led a collaborative work team with members from eight ministries to the disaster-hit areas to comfort residents and assist with the disaster relief work.