Relief workers yesterday battled to deliver aid to millions affected by Asia's devastating floods, as monsoon rains and storms continued to wreak havoc across the region.
While tropical storm Vongfong skirted Vietnam, giving disaster response teams breathing space to reach flooded regions, it dumped fresh rain on China, where an estimated 900 people have died in floods this summer.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Flood waters from both countries were also moving south towards Cambodia's Mekong Delta, threatening surrounding crops and villages, officials in Phnom Penh said.
Chinese officials said the massive Dongting Lake, a buffer for the mighty Yangtze River, had surged above danger levels and could pose a threat to vast tracts of farmland and some 10 million people living around it.
Chinese officials said there that if the lake were to breach its banks, areas around it could be hit by massive floods comparable to those of 1998 that left some 4,000 people dead.
"The lake is above warning marks in a number of places," an official from the Hunan Anti-Flood Bureau headquarters in the provincial capital of Changsha said.
Up to 40,000 officials and workers have been sent to fortify embankments around the 2,800km2 lake.
Water levels in the traditional danger spot of Chenglingji, where the Yangtze exits the lake, were already above warning marks yesterday.
At 8am the waters were almost 1.5m above the 32m flood-warning marks, said an official at the anti-flood bureau of nearby Changde city.
The China Daily estimated that more than 10 million people and some 667,000 hectares of farmland around the lake were under threat.
The death toll from devastating floods and landslides in Yunnan Province meanwhile has hit 231, state media said. It said some 21 million people have been affected in the province.
Meteorologists warned that Vongfong, which hit Guangdong Province on Monday, was expected to dump additional rain over Hunan Province as it moves across the country.
In Vietnam, disaster response teams yesterday cleared roads to allow vehicles to reach flooded regions after Vongfong spared the country.
Twenty-seven people died in flash floods in the mountainous north in four days of flooding that swept away houses, bridges and roads and triggered landslides.
Most of the deaths were in the north-central province of Ha Giang, bordering China.
Officials said so far more than 800 people have been killed in flooding and landslides caused by heavy monsoon rains in South Asia.
BACK IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD: The planned transit by the ‘Baden-Wuerttemberg’ and the ‘Frankfurt am Main’ would be the German Navy’s first passage since 2002 Two German warships are set to pass through the Taiwan Strait in the middle of this month, becoming the first German naval vessels to do so in 22 years, Der Spiegel reported on Saturday. Reuters last month reported that the warships, the frigate Baden-Wuerttemberg and the replenishment ship Frankfurt am Main, were awaiting orders from Berlin to sail the Strait, prompting a rebuke to Germany from Beijing. Der Spiegel cited unspecified sources as saying Beijing would not be formally notified of the German ships’ passage to emphasize that Berlin views the trip as normal. The German Federal Ministry of Defense declined to comment. While
‘UPHOLDING PEACE’: Taiwan’s foreign minister thanked the US Congress for using a ‘creative and effective way’ to deter Chinese military aggression toward the nation The US House of Representatives on Monday passed the Taiwan Conflict Deterrence Act, aimed at deterring Chinese aggression toward Taiwan by threatening to publish information about Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials’ “illicit” financial assets if Beijing were to attack. The act would also “restrict financial services for certain immediate family of such officials,” the text of the legislation says. The bill was introduced in January last year by US representatives French Hill and Brad Sherman. After remarks from several members, it passed unanimously. “If China chooses to attack the free people of Taiwan, [the bill] requires the Treasury secretary to publish the illicit
A senior US military official yesterday warned his Chinese counterpart against Beijing’s “dangerous” moves in the South China Sea during the first talks of their kind between the commanders. Washington and Beijing remain at odds on issues from trade to the status of Taiwan and China’s increasingly assertive approach in disputed maritime regions, but they have sought to re-establish regular military-to-military talks in a bid to prevent flashpoint disputes from spinning out of control. Samuel Paparo, commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command, and Wu Yanan (吳亞男), head of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Southern Theater Command, talked via videoconference. Paparo “underscored the importance
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
RSS