From Inside China AFP 8-3-98
Corruption, Fund Shortages Hamper China's Flood Control Efforts
JIUJIANG, China, (AFP) - Farmers living along China's mighty Yangtze River build their dikes higher each year -- but floodwaters always find a way through weak spots and swamp fields and homes.
This year the highest flood levels in four decades have borne down on several Chinese cities, forcing the mobilization of tens of millions of civilians to mend the beleaguered dikes with their bare hands.
Officials blame the failure to build a stronger anti-floods system on a lack of funds while farmers point to corrupt officials who they claim siphoned off money allocated for strengthening dikes.
A Bureau of Water Resources official identified as Xun at the Jiujiang flood control office in eastern Jiangxi province said that dikes along the Yangtze River were strong because they were reinforced with concrete but dikes around lakes in the area were made of earth alone.
"The Yangtze dike is quite strong and we should be able to withstand water level of up to 23 meters (75.9 feet)," the official said as the water level inched towards the breaking point.
As the biggest flood peak on the Yangtze since 1954 surged toward Jiujiang early on Wednesday, river levels mounted to 22.88 meters (75.5 feet).
But at Saicheng Lake, the water level has risen beyond expectations as a result of heavy rains last weekend
"The dike has not been built high enough in the first place so the lake area is always in danger of being flooded," the official said.
"In the past, we did not have enough money so we put all our resources into strengthening the Yangtze dike but now we have a plan to strengthen the Saicheng Lake dike."
"It is still a proposal because we do not have the money to implement the plan," he said.
In Hunan, another severely-hit province, a flood control officer named Xue said all dikes were constructed of earth.
"It is not possible to find a dike made completely of concrete in China, because that is a major project," he said.
Several dikes had been breached in Hunan along the Yangtze and Dongting Lake, but flood control officials had found a temporary measures to salvage dikes, he said.
"We have found that using plastic sheets to cover the dikes is a very effective and simple way to prevent the earth from being washed away," he said.
The official said no matter how high dikes were built each year, there was no way to prevent flooding because the Yangtze River washed down a huge quantity of silt which continually raised the river bed, making it a race to build dikes high enough to withstand flooding.
"Every year we raise the level of the dikes but every year it becomes too low because of the silting," he said.
Officials said a "100 boats" project had been launched to dredge the river bed between Wuhan and Jiujiang to complement work to raise dikes.
Zhao Shihong, director of information at the State Planning Commission, said the central and local governments had invested much more money in flood prevention this year.
Farmers in Jiujiang are accusing officials of siphoning off flood relief funds.
We do not want the money for ourselves. We want it put into a special fund to build a strong dike so that we will not suffer such flooding in future," said a woman, whose home in Hukou has been flooded since June 24
Li, 46, a farmer in the Yikung dike area in Jiujiang said 400,000 yuan ($48,000) was earmarked for the dike a few years ago.
"Some work was done but not much, otherwise the dike would not be in the shape it is today. We do not know where all the money has gone," Li said, as he pitched in to help his neighbors load a pick-up truck with earth bags.
The government-run Xinhua news agency reported Wednesday that the Communist Party had given warnings to four officials in Jiujiang for neglect of duty.
The officials were blamed for a failure to man the Saicheng Lake dike, which came close to crumbling, the report said.
Floods across southern China this year have already killed at least 2,500 people, according to official reports - more than double the number who perished last year during summer flooding.
According to an International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies report released Tuesday, the floods have left 804,000 people homeless and affected 77.8 million so far.(US$1 = 8.3 yuan)
As Yangtze Rises, China Must Choose
by Kevin Platt Christian Science MonitorLike never-ending waves of troops in an invincible army, the floods that for months have mounted attack after attack here are battering China's heartland.
Although millions of civilians and soldiers have been mobilized to counter the joint assault of the rains and the ever-swelling Yangtze River, the losses are growing. Already about 30 million people have been displaced during China's worst floods in nearly a half century; 5.6 million homes have been washed away, and almost 12 million acres of crops have been destroyed, say officials at China's State Council, or Cabinet.
The Yangtze, which flows from the Tibetan plateau and cuts across central China to the east-coast's Shanghai, is undergoing an old metamorphosis: Like the Nile, the river most of the time feeds the fertile plains surrounding its banks, but periodically rises up to destroy its neighbors.
The Yangtze is now being perceived as an enemy, and China's leadership, like any military strategist, is forced to decide how to contain the threat.
Water levels are rising so quickly that flood control officials ``are mulling flood diversion to ease pressure downstream and spare heavy industrial'' areas, says a report in the official China Daily.
In other words, the government must decide whether to flood poor rural districts along the Yangtze in order to save large cities like Wuhan.
Yet just as in war, the first casualty of the floods may be the truth: Several Chinese officials say privately that the policy of sacrificing peasant villages to protect rich urban centers has already begun.
Last week, before the Yangtze threatened to inundate Wuhan's 7 million residents, ``we diverted part of the waters into upstream villages,'' says an official at the Hubei Provincial Flood Control Headquarters. ``While some villages were destroyed, the flooded Yangtze safely passed'' downstream cities, adds the official, who declined to identify himself.
The practice of forcing the countryside to bear the brunt of hardships in order to safeguard urban elites dates back to imperial rule, and has been continued by the Communist Party, say several Chinese scholars.
``The peasants traditionally have been seen as a very weak interest group that can tolerate hardships,'' says a Chinese sociologist. ``Because China does not have national direct elections or a federal system, the leadership has little to fear by placing the burden of the disaster on the countryside,'' he adds.
Former reporter Dai Qing agrees. ``There have been no reports in the Chinese media on flooding the countryside to save the cities,'' says Ms. Dai. ``Yet this type of policy has been implemented throughout Chinese history. China's political system often makes ordinary people, poor people, sacrifice for the cities or the government,'' she adds.
Writer Dai says the mounting casualties from the floods ``have two causes - one natural and one manmade.'' While many countries are subject to periodic floods, China's problems have been greatly exacerbated by ``two generations of leaders who had no sense of environmental protection,'' she says.
During the reign of Chairman Mao Zedong, Beijing mobilized the masses in great projects to build dams and cut down trees without regard for environmental consequences. Mao also encouraged the Chinese masses to go forth and multiply, and the resulting population boom not only put more pressure on the ecosystem, but also forced would-be farmers to seek fertile land increasingly close to waterways.
Mao's successor, Deng Xiaoping, continued an environmentally questionable industrial revolution, and only since Deng's death has the Chinese leadership begun to address problems like massive erosion and worsening floods, Dai says.
China's rulers often say that their multibillion dollar Three Gorges Dam project on the Yangtze, slated for completion early in the 21st century, will help tame the river and control the floods that currently threaten millions of riverside dwellers. Yet Dai, a longtime critic of the dam who has written two books on the subject, sharply disagrees.
First, the titanic dam ``will partially protect downstream cities like Wuhan while increasing the danger for upstream cities like Chongqing,'' which holds 30 million residents, she says. Second, because the central government has budgeted so much money for the Three Gorges, it has meager funds left for disaster prevention and relief for the current floods, she adds.
A State Council spokesman said at a press conference on Thursday that Beijing had allocated 1.9 billion yuan (about US $240 million) for disaster relief, but conceded that some refugees from the floods had ``lacked food for a long time.''
Wang Zhenyao, a disaster relief official at the Ministry of Civil Affairs, says that ``so many peasants have been forced to flee their villages that it will be a huge undertaking to provide them all with food, tents, and medicine.''
Mr. Wang says that the central government had abandoned its policy of ``protecting cities by flooding the countryside several years ago'' and adds ``the current goal is to protect the entire area along the Yangtze.'' Yet another ministry official concedes that ``the old policy of blasting dikes in rural areas to limit the danger to larger cities is now being revived along scattered areas of the river.''