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China's sorrow -
Jo Winter reports on the effects of flood damage in China
Hong Kong will work - Catherine McKinley speaks to the optimistic director of Hong Kong's Business and Professional Federation
No room for U-turns - Amanda Ryder examines Shenzhen's economic success
Filling the gap - Michael Potter reports on the GAP Project's China operation
Chequered Chinese careers - Fiona Smith evaluates the value of reading for a degree in Chinese
Looking abroad - Professor Hua Qingzhao summarises the study of world history in China
The East was red - Neil Taylor and Frida Knight recount their pilgrimage to Mao's China
Rethinking China's past - Jenny Liu reviews the Mysteries of Ancient China exhibition at the British Museum
Books - God's Chinese Son; Real China; Did Marco Polo go to China ? , and more
Films - Tam Ly reports on Wong Kar Wei's new film 'Fallen Angels'
Mixing art with Politics - Paul Cheung speaks with Taiwanese independence activist Kenbo Liao
Floods in China have left thousands dead and millions homeless. Those who survived the floods are now vulnerable to disease. The effect on the rural economy cannot yet calculated. And yet China is no stranger to such natural disasters. Jo Winter reports.
Once more major flooding has caused a crisis in China. For centuries, the Chinese people have suffered and died as a result of such floods. The official death toll from three major floods in this century (in 1931, 1935 and 1954) stands at over 300,000: the disaster in 1931 alone left an estimated 14 million refugees. In 1994, over 5,000 people died in China's floods. Last summer the homes and crops of some 18 million people in Hunan and Jiangxi alone were destroyed. Official figures put the death toll that time at nearly 4,000.
This year, for only the second time since 1949, the Chinese government approached international aid agencies and foreign governments for flood relief: an indication perhaps that the problem is even worse than usual. The Chinese speak with resignation of 'one in a hundred year' or even 'one in a thousand year' floods.
Faced with such statistics, shouldn't we also just accept that floods are an unavoidable part of life in China and resign ourselves to these annual disasters? Put simply, no. Over the past decade or so, China has changed dramatically: many areas have changed beyond recognition. But we must no forget that for all the apparent development, China still has some serious problems. One of its biggest problems of course, remains trying to feed to many people from too little land.
Some environmentalists have traced China's current flood problems back to Maoist policies. Farmers were encouraged to plant crops and settle on the flood plains. Reservoir lakes along the Yangzi were drained to grow grain. So where else can the waters go? Mass movements like the Great Leap Forward saw deforestation on a grand scale. Decades later soil erosion and desertification remain huge problems. Other commentators have pointed unchecked deforestation and industrial development in Deng Xiaoping's China. As population pressures increase further so too does the strain on the available land. And on another level: thousands of kilometres of dikes have been repaired so many times since the 1950s that they simply can not cope with a big flood.
Perversely, while thousands have died or lost their homes in central southern China this year, many areas of northern China are suffering acute water shortages. In Datong, Shanxi province, water is only available to residents at certain times of the day while Beijing and Tianjin residents have among the lowest amounts of water available to anyone in the entire country. Much of this precious water is lost through leaking pipes: the People's Daily estimated that, if China could save only one percent of what is wasted, it would be enough to supply over six million people with water for a year. Many of those who saw their homes and livelihoods washed away this summer must wonder at the irony of it all.
There is no doubt that the Chinese government recognises the seriousness of the situation. The World Bank currently puts nearly two billion pounds worth of loans into China every year and of that millions are going into environmental protection and water conservancy projects. After the floods in Anhui province in 1991, the government tried to move people from the most vulnerable areas and foreign aid was used to enlarge overflow areas and storage reservoirs for floodwater. But millions of people are living in similarly vulnerable areas. Must they allbe moved, and if so, where can they go? The Chinese government has, of course, unveiled what it says will end the problem for ever: the Three Gorges Dam.
The arguments over the dam began with the People's Republic, outlived Mao and look set to continue into the next century. In a curious way the fate of the project has mirrored the state of China throughout those years. The original planners looked at constructing a series of dams on the Yangzi which many engineers today say would be the most practical solution to a flood control problem. Mao, with his flair for grand schemes, is reported to have suggested the idea that one immense dam would be so much better than several small ones. Throughout the 1950s, Soviet experts helped their communist comrades to survey the area; in the 1960s and until Mao's death, engineers in an isolated China debated the project alone and the arguments were dominated by factional fighting within the Party. in the 1980s, the old enemy, the United States, was asked to give assistance to the 'new' China emerging under Deng Xiaoping. Now in the 1990s, when after 40years the project was finally given the go-ahead, China has looked to the international community to fund it. Supporters of the project maintain that its sheer size is its main virtue. I have not encountered many engineers or environmentalists outside China who are prepared to agree. On the contrary, many maintain that the dam will make flooding worse not better as much of the danger of flooding comes from the areas below the dam and from tributaries which will not be affected at all by its construction. They claim that the causes of flooding in the area are diverse and one mass project will not solve them all. Objections to the dam continue. The writer, Dai Qing, one of the most vociferous opponents of the project, continues to criticise it even though she has already been imprisoned once for her opposition to the government.
Meanwhile, the floods continue and in the midst of thousands of PLA soldiers drafted into disaster sites are volunteers from agencies like Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) and the Red Cross. MSF has already organised three emergency programmes for China in this year alone and has a strong fundraising campaign underway in Hong Kong. With last winter's Big Freeze', the Lijiang earthquake and now the floods, their staff are getting used to assisting in China. They have provided crucial medical supplies and arranged shelter for thousands of people made homeless as a result of the floods.
Their reports make for harrowing reading. In Rongshui, Guangxi, at the height of the floods, the streets were flooded up to the fourth floor. Ten thousand people were forced to wait it out on rooftops, waiting to be rescued. Those who did manage to escape to the surrounding mountains did so with no food, no medicine and few items of clothing. The relief workers managed to make it into Liuzhou, but found themselves trapped there. Road and rail links were completely destroyed throughout Guangxi province, making a remote area virtually inaccessible.
What happened in Guangxi was repeated in regions all over China. However, if it were not for the relief workers in the flood areas, the world at large would not have had any idea of the scale of the disaster. Journalists complained that for too long they were denied access to disaster areas but when they were, we saw the death tolls climb every day. The fact remains that, no matter how vital, such piecemeal work can never be enough. China and the rest of the world must stop reacting to such events and look instead at how they could be prevented. There is too often a man-made element to Chinese 'natural' disasters and the sooner this is accepted, the sooner the 92 million people affected by this year's floods can learn not to fear the rainy season.
© Copyright Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding (SACU) 2001