A Drier China Adds To Economy’s Woes

GLANCING BACK THROUGH the archives, this Bystander came across a more-than-a-decade-old post about China’s water insecurity.

The problem persists. The unprecedented scale of this year’s heatwave and drought — phenomena that will likely be recurring as they are climate-change induced — has only exacerbated it. The consequences will have high economic costs, including some of the second-order ones.

It is not an exaggeration to suggest that water shortages due to climate change are now one of the most serious threats to an economy that looks increasingly beset by structural challenges.

Droughts — and flooding — are annual events, but climate change is making them more severe and longer-lasting. That also gives foreign companies one more reason to source their raw materials, components and finished goods from elsewhere, threatening the maintenance of China’s central role in international manufacturing supply chains.

One reason that water shortages are so difficult to tackle is the uneven geographical distribution of the country’s water resources. Northern China has sparse natural water flows compared to southern China and to the requirements of its dense population and industrial concentration.

Urbanisation has caused water tables throughout northern China to fall fast, drying up irrigation wells for farmers. Poorly regulated industrialisation has worsened the problem by polluting surface and underground water reserves.

Southern China is expected to provide net water transfers to the north and other parts of the country through the South-North Water Transfer Project, a massive three-canal engineering project to divert Yangtze waters to the arid north.

However, the heatwave and drought that occurred from June to August were centred in the south, and persistently drier conditions will raise further doubts about southern China’s capacity to compensate for the north’s structural water deficit.

Economic disruption

They also imply adverse impacts in various sectors of the economy.

Monsoonal rainfall patterns usually mean that the upper Yangtze basin receives half its annual rainfall in July and August. However, during the heatwave, water levels in the Yangtze river dropped to their lowest since records began in 1865. Hydropower generation along the river fell, causing electricity rationing that interrupted industrial production. Shipping using the country’s longest watercourse, a major transportation artery, was disrupted, causing some factories downstream to close temporarily because of the non-arrival of raw materials or parts.

China’s southern and south-western provinces also export hydroelectricity to the eastern seaboard. In mid-August, Sichuan province, which relies on hydropower for 80% of its energy usage, saw its hydropower generation capacity fall by half. The provincial government there, too, required factories to ration power usage, leading to reduced production, which fed into global supply chains.

A second-order consequence is that the drier conditions will also undermine the ‘Eastern Data and Western Computing’ plan to boost the economically lagging western provinces by locating power- (and water-) hungry data centres there that will serve digital activity in the more developed eastern provinces.

The rationale for setting up data centres in poor, western provinces like Guizhou is that mountain rivers can produce hydropower to generate electricity and the mountains also provide a cool climate to help bring down the cost of cooling, one of the largest expenses for data centres. Those conditions no longer look assured.

Agriculture

Agricultural impacts will likely be significant. According to state media, the summer drought wilted hundreds of thousands of hectares of crops, probably millions.

China is a net food importer, and the government prioritises increased domestic production. Harsher farming conditions will make it more difficult to achieve food self-sufficiency. China will thus remain a significant buyer and price-setter in global food markets as climate change aggravates agricultural problems worldwide.

Beijing has few means to ameliorate persistent nationwide water deficits. The agriculture ministry advised local officials during the drought to increase efforts to ensure adequate irrigation water, open new water sources, rotate irrigation and produce artificial rainfall when necessary.

Inducing rainfall by cloud-seeding can provide local relief (providing there are some clouds to seed) but is not a systemic solution to chronic annual heatwaves and drought. Exhortations to open up new water sources are empty words when rivers and lakes are drying up.

China will double down on investing in renewable energy technologies, increasing its influence in these industries globally. Yet, less hydropower may also sustain the continued construction of coal- and oil and gas-fired power plants, reinforcing climate change effects.

Cross-border disputes

Internationally, the reliance of South and Southeast Asian countries on river water originating upstream in China means that chronic droughts in China may inflame international tensions.

China has a poor record of addressing its neighbours’ concerns about upstream dams affecting water levels in the Mekong, Salween, Ganges and Yamuna rivers.

As India’s industrial activity grows, including power-hungry sectors such as semiconductor manufacturing, management of shared rivers is likely to add to tensions with China over disputed territory.

Power Rationing Widens As China’s Extreme Heat Continues

SHANGHAI IS THE latest city to introduce electricity rationing as drought and extreme temperatures overstrain the country’s power grid.

Buildings along the Bund have been told to turn off external lighting for two evenings early this week to save power.

In the middle reaches of the Yangtze river, where conditions are severe, falling water levels have reduced the power supply from its hydroelectric dams. At the same time, demand for air conditioning has soared.

Factories and shopping malls in Chongqing have already been subject to temporary power cuts as authorities prioritise supply to domestic consumers.

Impacts on production have varied; vehicle maker VW says its plant has shut down, while electronics maker Foxconn says the effects have been minimal.

Authorities have extended the power saving measures by five days into a second week, with Sichuan and the rest of the Southwest bearing the brunt of the extreme heat.

Falling water levels have also disrupted shipping. Tesla’s Shanghai plant has suspended production because components are not arriving from Sichuan.

The impact on agriculture is growing, too. On Saturday, Sichuan’s provincial disaster committee said that 47,000 hectares of crops had been lost and 433,000 hectares damaged. More than 800,000 people face a shortage of drinking water.

In neighbouring Hubei province, authorities say 6.9 million hectares of crops are damaged, and a further 220,000 people are short of drinking water.

Brush fires are starting to be reported, adding further peril.

State media report that the drought threatens the autumn grain harvest, which provides three-quarters of the annual yield. Authorities are cloud seeding to try to induce rain.

China issued the year’s first national drought warning last week, a yellow alert, the third highest. The summer is the hottest and driest since China began keeping temperature and rainfall records in 1961, adding to the stress on an already slowing economy.

Heatwave And Drought Stress China’s Electrical Power Supply

BACK IN 2009, this Bystander alighted on a press report that China spent $100 million a year on cloud-seeding to induce rain and snowfall to combat drought.

That was more than six times the figure quoted for the United States. China frequently resorts to using anti-aircraft guns and rocket launchers to blast the sky with silver iodide, reportedly resorting to this way to make rain more often than any other country.

In the past, most cloud seeding occurred in the increasingly arid North China Plain. Now it is being deployed in parts of central and southwest China amid a severe drought and a two-month-long heatwave that the National Climate Centre says is the country’s longest and strongest since records were first kept in the early 1960s.

However, Hubei and several other provinces along the drought-stricken Yangtze river, now at record low levels following less than half the usual rainfall in some stretches, have run into a familiar problem with the technique: you need the clouds to seed in the first place. They are in short supply in a heatwave.

Upstream in Sichuan, the mercury has risen above 40 degrees Celsius with no immediate relief in sight. With water levels in hydropower reservoirs down by as much as half and demand for air conditioning rising, power shortages of up to several hours are widespread.

Electrical blackouts as authorities ration power are affecting industrial production. Emergency measures instituted to ensure households get priority for what power is available are forcing factories to cut back output or stop work altogether.

Foxconn’s factory in Chengdu, which makes Apple’s iPads, is one business amid a six-day shut down because of power rationing.

The overall impact on the economy of drought-induced temporary factory shutdowns will likely be minimal, but it is another drag on an already decelerating economy.

A longer-term concern may be the loss of crops for the autumn harvest, which could drive up inflation. The Ministry of Water Resources has said that the drought has affected 821,333 hectares of farmland in Sichuan, Chongqing, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi and Anhui.

Only half the usual annual release of water from the Three Gorges reservoir to relieve drought downstream has been possible this year. Many rivers and streams that flow into the Yangtse and are a source of agricultural irrigation are reported to have dried up.

Meanwhile, at the mouth of the river, Shanghai hit a sweltering 40.9 degrees Celsius in July, equalling its hottest day since the city started keeping records in 1873.

Meteorologists predict that the long-lasting heat wave will become the ‘new normal’ due to climate change.

This will force authorities to pay more attention to the inadequacies of the country’s national power grid, as evidenced by Vice Premier Han Zheng, who, on a visit to the State Grid Corporation of China this week, highlighted the importance of the energy and power supply for social and economic stability.

Henan Flooding Death Toll Rises

THE DEATH TOLL from the torrential rains in the Henan provincial capital, Zhengzhou, has risen to 25, including 12 who died in the flooded metro system. Surviving passengers’ harrowing accounts of being trapped in neck-high water have been posted on social media.

State media say at least seven people are missing in Zhengzhou. A further four casualties have been reported in the nearby city of Gongyi, which has been inundated.

Across the province, more than 1.2 million people have been affected, and some 165,000 evacuated in a massive disaster rescue and relief operation. Damage, including to crops, is widespread after a year’s rainfall fell in three days.

Authorities are warning that the heavy rain has increased the risk of geological disasters in Henan’s mountainous western and northwestern regions, raising the prospect of further loss of life. The flooding has already collapsed some roads in the province.

Severe Flooding Hits Central China

RECORD RAINFALL IN Henan province has caused extensive flooding and left at least 12 people dead.

The twelve who died were trapped by rising waters in the metro system in Zhengzhou, the provincial capital which lies on the southern bank of the Yellow River. More than 500 others were rescued from flooded trains and platforms underground.

The city experienced two-thirds of its annual rainfall in 24 hours spanning Monday and Tuesday. The silt-rich Yellow River often floods during the rainy season from July to October.

Some 100,000 residents have also been evacuated from the city, known for being a centre for iPhone assembly at a Foxconn plant, though the company says that the flooding has not affected operations.

More than a dozen cities in the province have been deluged. Property damage is extensive. Henan accounts for a quarter of the country’s annual wheat harvest.

Concern is mounting that a breached dam in Luoyang city could collapse. Several reservoirs whose water levels are above safety levels also pose a risk of further disasters, as do landslides.

Forty-five years ago 125,000 people lost their lives in flooding in Henan, many in incidents that occurred after the initial flooding.

Thousands of rescuers including soldiers are being deployed in a huge rescue effort. State media is actively countering social media grumbling about the lack of warnings of flood risk ahead of the heavy rains.

Local officials have been told to act pre-emptively where they see danger and not wait for instructions from central authorities. This would suggest that lessons have been learned from the slow initial response to the Covid-19 outbreak in Wuhan, where municipal officials were accused on not acting swiftly enough to contain the outbreak.

The flooding in Henan is the latest example of extreme weather around the world.

Storing Beijing’s Storm Water Before It Does Harm

Following the heavy rains that recently inundated Beijing with such loss of life, the capital is to build 20 underground flood pools to relieve future storm flooding. They will be put under places known to susceptible to flash floods, low-lying roadways in particular.

A conventional surface flood pool is the land around a reservoir that is intended to be flooded in the event of extreme rains as the reservoir rises and backs up. The excess water is then run off by being released through the reservoir’s dam in subsequent days. Underground storm water storage works in much the same way, temporarily holding storm water until a city’s drainage system can handle it.

Flood pools are not only a common form of flood management, but, smartly managed, are also a potentially profitable source of municipal water supplies, irrigation, recreation facilities and fish or wildlife habitats, Beijing’s flood pools won’t bring such broad public goods as far as we can tell. They will have to be fitted in between all the other subterranean construction beneath a long-established city: sewer and water pipes, subway lines, building foundations and the like.

Modern underground storm water storage systems are often modular, so can be constructed as shape and space allows. Alternatively they can be built from large diameter pipes and threaded around obstructions. Their capacity is typically equivalent to a swimming pool and are easiest to retrofit to places like roads and parking lots that can be dug up and the systems installed under them.

Urban flooding is a worsening problem in China (and elsewhere) as global warming, urbanization and industrialization pose a growing triple threat to cities’ natural defences, defenses urban planners have anyway been concreting over with reckless abandon.  It is, though, reasonable to ask why there hasn’t previously been more provision to deal with flash floods in the capital.

Hong Kong, for one, has underground storm water storage in several of its towns already and is planning to build more, notably in Happy Valley on Hong Kong Island which is to get an award winning, state of the art flood pool at a cost of HK$1 billion ($130 million). Hong Kong had the advantage of being able to build the lower -tech tanks it already has into its new towns from the outset, a luxury that Beijing doesn’t enjoy.

Urban planners are only now realizing that they have to make cities greener so they are less encouraging to extreme weather. All the newly constructed impervious surfaces such as roads, parking lots and rooftops, create run-offs that existing urban drainage, often old and inadequate, can’t handle. can’t handle.  Not only is ground storage for rainwater scarce and run-offs from hard surfaces absent, ancient streams that could carry rainwater to rivers and ponds that could help it find its way to acquirers below have been filled in. As Beijing’s are expensively learning– the economic cost of the recent floods  is estimated to be at least 2.3 billion yuan ($360 million), before the cost of installing the new storage tanks–they need to create the modern urban equivalent of something nature has provided naturally.

China’s Fast And Furious Rising Seas

The annual report from the State Oceanic Administration on China’s rising sea levels brings no surprises and no cheer in equal measure. Sea levels continue to rise faster than the global average. By the middle of this century, they are forecast to be 145mm-200mm higher. That doesn’t sound much but is sufficient to flood 87,000 square kilometers (34,000 square miles) of lowlands, or about 10% of coastal provinces’ land area. More than 1,300 seaside townships, 2,000 kilometers of rail lines and 22,000 kilometers of roads are at risk of being underwater. The Bohai Sea and the adjacent southwestern side of the Yellow Sea. and the waters around Hainan are rising fastest.

As we’ve noted before, urbanization, industrialization and overuse of groundwater is exacerbating the problem. Large cities are sinking because the water table below is sinking. too. All in all, coastal regions are left more vulnerable to the ravages of wind and rain. Typhoons affected more than 500 million people in southern China last year and caused more than 3.3. billion yuan ($520 million) of damage. In addition, river deltas such as the Yangtze’s and the Pearl’s will become more vulnerable to surges, salt tides and the salination of farmland and coastal forests.

Short of dealing with climate change, there are few hard defences against rising sea levels. Soft natural defences and restricting development in the most vulnerable areas is, as the SOE recommends, the most prudent course.

Flood And Drought Co-Exist In China

Despite heavy seasonal rains causing floods and havoc across southern China, the north and parts of the center of the country still face severe drought. Officials have warned that crops are at risk on the North China Plain between the Yellow and Huai rivers. More than 4 million people across eight provinces are short of drinking water. The lack of rain extends to the Korean peninsula across the Yellow Sea. The Associated Press reports that North Korea is facing its most extreme drought since records were first kept more than a century ago, threatening already tenuous food supplies.

Rains Bring Scant Relief To Drought In Southwest China

Nearly 5.5 million people are still suffering from lingering drought in Yunnan and Sichuan despite the recent rains bringing some relief. Authorities say that only 290,000 fewer people and 220,000 fewer livestock in the two provinces are short of water because of the break in the weather. More than 400,000 hectares of crops have been affected, according to the Office of State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters. Rainfall in the two provinces has been at 10% of normal levels, threatening tobacco, corn and rice crops.

Separately, disaster relief authorities in Guizhou say that more than 5.5 million people have been affected by drought, rainstorms and hailstorms that have caused direct economic losses of 1.8 billion yuan ($283 million) so far this year. The picture above of an almost dried out reservoir in Weining County in Guizhou is dated May 20.

Meanwhile, three people died when torrential rain hit Chongqing, and more than 5,000 people had to be relocated after a heavy rainstorm hit parts of Hunan. In Nanning, capital of Guangxi, nearly 900 people were evacuated after a road next to which a school had been drilling for drinking water subsided, causing one building to collapse and six more to tilt.

Persistent Drought Starts To Threaten China’s Crops

The persistent drought that has hit 13 provinces in southwest and central China is starting to have an adverse impact on farming, China’s drought-relief officials have indicated for the first time. The fear is that the spring planting on 4 million hectares of crop land is threatened by the shortage of water. Reservoirs, such as the one in the picture above, in Shilin County, Yunnan, have dried up, worsening China’s structural water shortages. Approaching 8 million people and 4.6 million head of livestock are short of drinking water, officials say, with the latest number suggesting the impact of the lack of rain is spreading with the drought now in its third year in some parts. Yunnan, Sichuan, Hebei, Shanxi and Gansu are worse affected. A widespread emergency relief effort is underway.

Footnote: The main cash crops in Yunnan, where the drought is most intense, are rice, maize and wheat. The province is also known for its tobacco and tea.