Viewpoint

02.21.24

“When It All Comes down to It, China Has No Real ‘New Year’”

Li Chengpeng & Geremie R. Barmé
I’ve written all of this because friends urged me to offer some reflections on the year gone by and jot down a few thoughts for the upcoming year. But I didn’t want to waste my time looking up data points. Anyway, I don’t see that there was all that...

The China-India Row That Spells Disaster for Flood Victims

Navin Singh Khadka
BBC
Fear of flooding has been growing in the Indian state of Assam ever since upstream China stopped sharing river data crucial for issuing early warnings.

China's 'Sponge Cities' Aim to Re-Use 70% of Rainwater

Asit K Biswas and Kris Hartley
CNN
Asian cities are struggling to accommodate rapid urban migration, and development is encroaching on flood-prone areas.

Depth of Field

02.16.17

Riding into the New Year

Yan Cong, Ye Ming & more from Yuanjin Photo
As preparations for the Chinese New Year got underway, Liang Yingfei set up a roadside studio and asked migrants traveling home by motorbike to stop for a quick photograph. While in Cambodia for the Angkor Photo Festival & Workshops, Jia...

Historic Flooding Costs China $44.7 Billion So Far This Year

Wade Shepard
Forbes
’Ruthless’ urbanization takes its toll.

China Floods: At Least 75 Dead or Missing

BBC
Authorities have mobilized troops and heavy equipment across China.

China’s Devastating Floods Can Be Traced Back to Corruption and Overbuilding

Zheping Huang
Quartz
Scandals are not uncommon in China’s flood-control projects.

Environment

01.11.16

Chinese Cities Most at Risk from Rising Sea Levels

from chinadialogue
A study by Climate Central, a non-profit news organization focusing on climate science, showed that 12 other nations have more than 10 million people living on land that would be destroyed should the earth’s temperature rise to 4 degrees Celsius.As...

At Sea in the City

Economist
When building cities in China, someone forgot the drains.

Mudslide in Western China Buries 30

Wall Street Journal
Flooding in western China, the worst in 50 years for some areas, triggered a landslide Wednesday that buried about 30 people, trapped hundreds in a highway tunnel and destroyed a memorial to a devastating 2008 earthquake. 

China Pulls Paper Over Flood Story: Rights Group

Agence France-Presse
China has pulled a Beijing newspaper from the newsstands after it criticised the official handling of the July floods and said the government had underreported the death toll, a rights group said Tuesday. Authorities in China's capital...

Media

07.27.12

Could CCTV's Naming of Flood Victims Signal a Turn Toward Transparency?

Amy Qin
In the face of mounting criticism from online commentators and state media, Beijing city officials have finally raised the official death toll of the devastating floodwaters that hit the city last weekend from thirty-six to seventy-seven. The...

Cyber Candles for Two Tragedies

Anne Henochowicz
China Digital Times
Yesterday marked two tragedies in China: the third day of floods in the nation’s capital and the one-year anniversary of the high-speed train crash in Wenzhou. Connecting the two events, especially by lighting commemorative cyber candles, is a...

Crisis Management Falters as Beijing Mayor Resigns

Russel Leigh Moses
WSJ: China Real Time Report
If this past weekend’s deluge in Beijing shows us anything, it’s that nothing and no one in this city is waterproof.

Floods in Beijing

The Economist
Economist
For a capital city unusual, and perhaps unique, in being situated neither on a coastline nor along the banks of a big river, Beijing has been under water a lot of late. Violent summer rainstorms flooded the city in June of last year, overwhelming...

Flood Brings Out Beijing's Digital Samaritans

Wendy Qian
China Digital Times
Netizens have reached out a digital hand to those left stranded by Beijing’s torrential rains. There are over 7.4 million posts on Weibo on the subject ('Beijing' + 'Baoyu' or 'rainstorm'), many of them calls for help—...

Beijing Meets Critics Online in Wake of Deadly Floods

Loretta Chao and Paul Mozur
Wall Street Journal
Skies were blue and streets mostly dry on Sunday and Monday in Beijing, with only a scattering of abandoned cars as a reminder of the downpour that caused flooding throughout the sprawling capital and killed at least 37 people on Saturday. ...

The Beijing Deluge of 2012

Jeremy Goldkorn
Danwei
Xinhua reported on Monday morning that the death toll after torrential rains pounded Beijing on Saturday had climbed to 37. The report said that “Among the victims, 25 were drowned, six were killed in house collapses, one...

Heaviest Rains in 60 Years Kill 37 in Beijing

Ben Blanchard
Reuters
The Chinese capital's heaviest rainstorm in six decades killed at least 37 people, flooded streets and stranded 80,000 people at the main airport, state media and the government said on Sunday.