More than 1 million people living along rivers in China’s south have been evacuated with water rising to dangerous levels, Chinese state media said yesterday, as torrential rains left 136 dead or missing.
The government said more than 1.4 million residents living on river banks and in low-lying areas had to move, the official China Daily reported.
Zhang Zhitong, deputy director of the Office of State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters, said China’s second-largest waterway, the Pearl River, which crosses the south, had breached warning marks on Thursday.
Torrential and virtually unrelenting rain has battered large swathes of China’s south since last Sunday, triggering devastating floods and landslides resulting in 88 confirmed deaths.
The Xinhua news agency reported that, in Fujian Province alone, 25 people had died in rain-triggered landslides and 15 more were missing.
Photos on China News Service showed people in Fujian’s Gutian county wearing lifejackets and wading in deep water through flooded streets.
State television broadcast images of a bridge in another Fujian town collapsing as water raged underneath it, and in Guangdong Province, houses were shown almost entirely submerged.
Meanwhile, diggers in nearby Jiangxi were seen clearing roads of huge rocks caused by landslides and workers hung off poles working at restoring electricity for residents.
According to the latest statement from the nation’s civil affairs ministry, 48 people were still missing in eight provinces and regions in the south and the cost of the disaster had now reached 11 billion yuan (US$1.6 billion).
Authorities have raised the level of their emergency response as rescue and flood-prevention work continues, the ministry said.
The National Meteorological Center warned yesterday of more rainstorms to come, a day after it issued an orange storm alert — one level lower than the most serious red alert.
“There will be heavy rain over the next three days, and flood-control work will face enormous challenges,” it said in a statement, adding that some of the rainfall in the south was up to three times greater than in normal years.
NO HUMAN ERROR: After the incident, the Coast Guard Administration said it would obtain uncrewed aerial vehicles and vessels to boost its detection capacity Authorities would improve border control to prevent unlawful entry into Taiwan’s waters and safeguard national security, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday after a Chinese man reached the nation’s coast on an inflatable boat, saying he “defected to freedom.” The man was found on a rubber boat when he was about to set foot on Taiwan at the estuary of Houkeng River (後坑溪) near Taiping Borough (太平) in New Taipei City’s Linkou District (林口), authorities said. The Coast Guard Administration’s (CGA) northern branch said it received a report at 6:30am yesterday morning from the New Taipei City Fire Department about a
IN BEIJING’S FAVOR: A China Coast Guard spokesperson said that the Chinese maritime police would continue to carry out law enforcement activities in waters it claims The Philippines withdrew its coast guard vessel from a South China Sea shoal that has recently been at the center of tensions with Beijing. BRP Teresa Magbanua “was compelled to return to port” from Sabina Shoal (Xianbin Shoal, 仙濱暗沙) due to bad weather, depleted supplies and the need to evacuate personnel requiring medical care, the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) spokesman Jay Tarriela said yesterday in a post on X. The Philippine vessel “will be in tiptop shape to resume her mission” after it has been resupplied and repaired, Philippine Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin, who heads the nation’s maritime council, said
CHINA POLICY: At the seventh US-EU Dialogue on China, the two sides issued strong support for Taiwan and condemned China’s actions in the South China Sea The US and EU issued a joint statement on Wednesday supporting Taiwan’s international participation, notably omitting the “one China” policy in a departure from previous similar statements, following high-level talks on China and the Indo-Pacific region. The statement also urged China to show restraint in the Taiwan Strait. US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell and European External Action Service Secretary-General Stefano Sannino cochaired the seventh US-EU Dialogue on China and the sixth US-EU Indo-Pacific Consultations from Monday to Tuesday. Since the Indo-Pacific consultations were launched in 2021, references to the “one China” policy have appeared in every statement apart from the
More than 500 people on Saturday marched in New York in support of Taiwan’s entry to the UN, significantly more people than previous years. The march, coinciding with the ongoing 79th session of the UN General Assembly, comes close on the heels of growing international discourse regarding the meaning of UN Resolution 2758. Resolution 2758, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1971, recognizes the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as the “only lawful representative of China.” It resulted in the Republic of China (ROC) losing its seat at the UN to the PRC. Taiwan has since been excluded from