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-LIMITS PARTNERSHIP: ‘The bottom line’ is that if the US were to have a conflict with China or Russia it would likely open up a second front with the other, a US senator said Beijing and Moscow could cooperate in a conflict over Taiwan, the top US intelligence chief told the US Senate this week. “We see China and Russia, for the first time, exercising together in relation to Taiwan and recognizing that this is a place where China definitely wants Russia to be working with them, and we see no reason why they wouldn’t,” US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told a US Senate Committee on Armed Services hearing on Thursday. US Senator Mike Rounds asked Haines about such a potential scenario. He also asked US Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lieutenant General Jeffrey Kruse
NOVEL METHODS: The PLA has adopted new approaches and recently conducted three combat readiness drills at night which included aircraft and ships, an official said Taiwan is monitoring China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) exercises for changes in their size or pattern as the nation prepares for president-elect William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. Tsai made the comment at a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, in response to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu’s (王定宇) questions. China continues to employ a carrot-and-stick approach, in which it applies pressure with “gray zone” tactics, while attempting to entice Taiwanese with perks, Tsai said. These actions aim to help Beijing look like it has
China’s intrusive and territorial claims in the Indo-Pacific region are “illegal, coercive, aggressive and deceptive,” new US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo said on Friday, adding that he would continue working with allies and partners to keep the area free and open. Paparo made the remarks at a change-of-command ceremony at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii, where he took over the command from Admiral John Aquilino. “Our world faces a complex problem set in the troubling actions of the People’s Republic of China [PRC] and its rapid buildup of forces. We must be ready to answer the PRC’s increasingly intrusive and
INSPIRING: Taiwan has been a model in the Asia-Pacific region with its democratic transition, free and fair elections and open society, the vice president-elect said Taiwan can play a leadership role in the Asia-Pacific region, vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) told a forum in Taipei yesterday, highlighting the nation’s resilience in the face of geopolitical challenges. “Not only can Taiwan help, but Taiwan can lead ... not only can Taiwan play a leadership role, but Taiwan’s leadership is important to the world,” Hsiao told the annual forum hosted by the Center for Asia-Pacific Resilience and Innovation think tank. Hsiao thanked Taiwan’s international friends for their long-term support, citing the example of US President Joe Biden last month signing into law a bill to provide aid to Taiwan,