Heavy rain and floods have killed at least 30 people and caused more than 80,000 to be moved from their homes in the latest extreme weather event in China this summer. Some 136 villages outside the capital were left without power as streets were submerged and roads were damaged.
Beijing has experienced torrential rain for almost a week with extreme downpours intensifying on Monday, when 28 people died in Miyun, a suburb in the mountains north of the city. Two other people were killed in nearby Yanqing as floodwater swept through streets, quickly submerging them.
Miyun saw 543mm of rainfall in recent days, almost as much as Beijing averages in an entire year. Although the Chinese capital has a generally dry climate, July is often rainy but there was more rain in the city during the past week than in the whole month during an average year.
Xi Jinping ordered an all-out rescue effort and the National Development and Reform Commission said on Tuesday that it was urgently releasing 200 million renminbi (€24 million) to support Beijing’s flood relief.
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“The heavy rainfall and flooding in Miyun have caused heavy casualties. It is imperative to make all-out efforts to search for and rescue missing individuals, properly relocate affected residents, and do everything possible to minimise casualties,” premier Li Qiang said.
He Na, the chief forecaster at the Beijing Meteorological Observatory, told local media that the heavy rain last weekend was the result of a subtropical high pressure system that had travelled unusually far north and remained there for days. Monday’s rainfall, which was more destructive, was due to a long trough of westerly winds moving from north to south.
This summer has seen flooding across much of China, and a flood-related landslide killed three people last month in the southwestern city of Ya’an. The emergency management ministry said that natural disasters had cost China more than 54 billion renminbi (€6.5 billion) already this year with flooding accounting for more than 90 per cent of the losses.
Two years ago Beijing experienced its worst torrential rainstorm in 140 years, causing widespread flooding in neighbouring Hebei province. Heavy rain and flooding in Zhengzhou, in Henan province, in 2021 killed 400 people.
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has warned that warmer seas are contributing to the formation of dense, vertical clouds that issue huge quantities of rain quickly. This acceleration of the water cycle can see more rainfall in a couple of hours than would normally fall in a day or two.
China emits more greenhouse gases than any other country in the world and it continues to build coal-fired power stations. But it is also the global leader in renewable energy, generating huge quantities of solar and wind power and rapidly replacing conventional cars with electric vehicles.
