Tipping Point

Authorities did issue extreme weather warnings and notices to evacuate in many areas. But unused to extreme floods in dry northern China, many did not realize the potential severity. While the flood waters have receded, residents are left counting the cost. 　

Yesanpo in Hebei Province is a popular summer destination, with many home-style guesthouses lining the banks of the Juma River, which splits the mountainous settlement in two. Liu Bin, who runs an inn, received an alert on July 30 that all tourists must leave. The Juma River, which runs in Laiyuan in Hebei, is famous for its gorges and peaks. Yesanpo, 200 kilometers southwest of the Beijing metropolitan area with a population of some 20,000, has many homes squeezed close to the river. 　

After Liu’s guests left, he moved his valuables and electronics to the second floor. His house, 10 meters high, is 20 meters from the river. The next day, while children were evacuated to a school on higher ground, he and his wife elected to stay. At 6pm, the river started rising, taking only an hour to reach the second floor. The couple, in their 50s, clambered to the roof, and using a ladder were able to escape. Authorities said in early August that the whole Yesanpo area, which includes 15 towns and 284 villages, had suffered devastating floods. 

In early August, Zhang Hengde, deputy director of the National Meteorological Center, told media that such heavy and sustained rainfall in Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei and other regions was extremely rare in China’s history. Beijing Meteorological Bureau said that the maximum rainfall reached 744.8 millimeters in the capital region between July 29 and August 2, the most since records began in 1883. 　

Settlements in the Haihe River Basin, the largest river system in northern China, which drains areas to the west and south of Beijing and enters the Bohai Sea near Tianjin, were subject to devastating flooding. There were destructive flash floods in the mountainous Fangshan and Mentougou districts of west and southwest Beijing, and regions in the flood plains of the Haihe River were inundated, including Zhuozhou, a city of 662,000 people to the southwest of Beijing’s outlying Fangshan District. 　

In a speech in 2022, Zhang Jianyun, a scholar at the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said that due to its terrain and the climate impact, the North China Plain is experiencing more frequent storms and flooding, and that extreme weather events will increase. 　

On the afternoon of August 1, over 100 villagers were trapped by floodwaters in Sanbuqiao Village, part of Zhuozhou. Resident Zhang Liang told NewsChina the flood arrived suddenly at 11pm on July 31. Village leaders had told them to move immediately to a school at a higher elevation. But after sending seniors and children to the evacuation center, Zhang, like most villagers, waited at home. “Most of us preferred to stay home to safeguard livestock and property,” Zhang said. But as the water levels rose so quickly, he had no time to run. Grabbing a few packs of instant noodles, he climbed onto his roof. With no drinking water, he waited for 30 hours before volunteer rescuers reached him. 　

Despite accurate weather forecasts of heavy rainstorms and early warning of major meteorological disasters on July 29, the intensity and the damage went far beyond people’s expectations. According to Hebei Provincial Flood Control and Drought Relief Office, the accumulated water volume was 27.5 billion cubic meters, over twice the total storage capacity of large and medium-sized reservoirs in the province. Some 1.22 million people were displaced, and among them were 857,200 people relocated from flood diversion and storage areas. 　

Zhuozhou, located where the Taihang Mountains and Yanshan Mountains meet, is also where several rivers converge. Jia Shaofeng, a researcher at the Institute of Geographical Sciences and Human Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences, told NewsChina that the terrain exacerbated the severity of the flood in Zhuozhou. Rain and floods usually only occur from late July to early August. In the last 100 years, Zhuozhou has experienced three major floods – in August 1963, August 1996 and July 2012. 　

“Zhuozhou hadn’t experienced a severe flood for many years, so residents lacked awareness of the risk, opting to take their chances despite the danger,” an anonymous employee from Zhuozhou Water Resources Bureau told NewsChina. 　

Rescue workers told NewsChina that operations were much more challenging than in previous floods. Jin Shaohui from the China Canoeing Association told the reporter that his group arrived in Zhuozhou with kayaks before dawn on August 1. “Many roads were blocked, so we had to randomly try to make our way in,” Jin said. When the flood waters reached the flatter plain areas, the momentum slowed. But debris, twigs, wires and other obstacles littered the flooded area, blocking passage for their boats or damaging them. They often had to clear a path through the obstacles before they could rescue anyone. 　

The waters in Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei did not start to recede until August 3, and it will take much longer for river water levels to get back to normal. According to Li Na, deputy director of the Hebei Provincial Water Resources Department, it was estimated that an additional 300 million to 400 million cubic meters of water would pass through Zhuozhou after the flood event. Cheng Xiaotao, an expert in flood control at the China Institute of Water Conservancy, told NewsChina on August 3 that after sustained heavy rainfall, the mountain soils became saturated. This moisture will be gradually released, and the water will continue to converge on the downstream region. “At least the flood peak has passed, so this releases the pressure we saw a few days ago on the downstream region,” Cheng said. 

After the extreme flood event of July 21, 2012, in which 79 people died in Beijing and nearby regions, authorities in Hebei Province said there were no water conservancy or flow projects in the upper Juma River, which flows through Yesanpo. It also suffered severe floods in 2012. However, the local government said they needed central government approval to build a reservoir. 　

Water resource experts from Zhuozhou blamed the lack of water conservancy projects in the upper Juma for the extensive flooding. Cheng Xiaotao said that a reservoir along the upper Juma would have allowed the flood peak from the Dashi River, which also flows through Zhuozhou, to pass before allowing the Juma flood peak to pass. “It’s like cars queuing up on the highway. Allowing the orderly passage of many cars a day is safe. But with no control, there’ll be a traffic jam,” Cheng said, adding that lack of coordination between Beijing and Hebei resulted in the failure to build a reservoir along the Juma River. 　

In an interview with The Beijing News in 2004, Hebei Water Resources Bureau said the province disagreed with building a dam in Beijing’s Fangshan District over water rights issues. Hebei was worried an upstream dam would curtail water for them. 　

NewsChina learned from various sources in Zhuozhou that because of water shortages in recent years, areas in the lower Juma River did not expect an upstream reservoir would be built. A source from Zhuozhou Water Resource Bureau said there was a conflict in the department over building an upstream dam. “Reservoirs are needed to regulate flood peaks, but we shouldn’t let flood control override the need for agricultural and industrial production. This is not a simple black and white issue, it requires multidisciplinary and multi-agency input,” the source said. 

The source from Zhuozhou Water Bureau said the areas had not been used for almost two decades, quite common in usually dry northern China. Many residents, even local officials, do not know which areas can be flooded during extreme weather events. Unaware of the potential danger, construction was allowed in the flood plain, and residents near flood discharge channels sometimes took soil from dikes and levees to build houses. “The lesson of these floods should be that local governments must pay attention to and enhance management of flood storage and detention areas and build and design secure and strong levees,” the source said. 　

“In theory, when planning a city, important infrastructure, residential areas and factories should avoid areas at risk of flood as much as possible. However, in China, limited land resources resulted in people and water competing for land,” Cheng said. 　

Yuan Jun, director of the Planning Department of Haihe River Water Resources Commission, Ministry of Water Resources, said in an article published in 2022 that only 65 percent of levees along the Haihe River met flood standards. Yuan said that river management was insufficient and because floods were rare, river channels and beaches were impeded by constructions, crops and other obstacles that affect the flood discharge process. 　

Yuan proposed strengthening the coordinated planning and management of river basins, improving the quality of flood control projects for major river courses and tributaries, and improving the communication and early warning facilities in flood storage and detention areas. 

Professor Yang Saini at the School of National Security and Emergency Management, Beijing Normal University told NewsChina that extreme weather forecasts should include more information, such as informing people about how high water levels could get. “The alert should include information such as degree of the flood affecting local transportation, communications and power facilities, and damage to farmland. People need to know this information so they can take precautionary actions and make better preparations,” Yang said. 　

During this flood, in many mountainous areas the evacuation and relocation process was rather chaotic. “It depends on whether there is a suitable relocation site, and whether there is good resource evaluation and timely maintenance of the resettlement site in advance, all of which require funds, resources and advance preparation,” Yang said. 　

Cheng said these areas have insufficient flood response mechanisms and lack flood simulations, shortcomings revealed in their delayed responses. 　

As of mid-August, authorities in Hebei announced compensation for people who lost their homes and livelihoods. According to the China Flood Control Law of 1997, the compensation scheme covers up to 70 percent of the cost of the damage. 

Resilient cities are seen as one solution. In response to extreme weather, cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Nanjing have included the construction of a resilient city in their government work report or in their urban plans. The construction of resilient cities was written into the country’s 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025) and Vision 2035. 　

The OECD defines resilient cities as those with “the ability to absorb, recover and prepare for future shocks,” including economic, environmental, social or institutional shocks. 　

Many places in North China saw power, water, transportation and communications outages complicating rescue efforts and leaving residents in dire situations during this storm. Compared with southern China, many northern cities are less prepared for floods. 　

Yang Saini said there is an urgent need to reassess the impact of infrastructure in some areas more vulnerable to climate change, and whether existing preventative measures should be upgraded. 　

The World Resources Institute together with the National Center for Climate Change Strategy Research and International Cooperation released a report titled “The Acceleration of the Construction of Climate-resilient Infrastructure” in 2021. It found that Chinese climate resilient infrastructure faces finance shortages, and in the next five years, the annual finance gap would be nearly 500 billion yuan (US$69b). 　

Developing resilient city capacities is a complex and systematic project with high costs, which requires each city to construct and invest according to its own economic situation and development characteristics, Yang said. 　

In the aftermath of the flood, Beijing and Hebei governments vowed to prioritize flood control and building resilient cities. On August 11, China’s Ministry of Water Resources decided to review the flood control processes for each river in the Haihe Basin, and develop a long-term plan to improve flood control capacity.