AS TORRENTIAL rain continues to lash eastern and southern China, the government says more than five million people have been displaced or otherwise affected by flooding, while a spike in food prices is also becoming a growing headache at a time when the country is struggling to control inflation.
China is beset by flooding and drought every year and many of the flooded areas this year were parched with drought just a few short weeks ago. About 170 people are estimated to have lost their lives since the onset of the current deluge.
The Xinhua news agency said the rains had left large swathes of the central province of Hubei and Zhejiang province in the east under water, with more than one 432,200 hectares of farmland inundated.
About 1,000 businesses were forced to suspend operations and 5.7 million people had their lives disrupted, the agency said. More than 7,000 homes collapsed.
In Hubei, two people were killed after the Yangtze river and its tributaries burst their banks, with as many as three million people affected, Xinhua said in a separate report. Further downstream in Anhui province, three people died and another 120,000 were evacuated as a result of floods.
Fu Xianjun, a farmer in Zhejiang, said it was the biggest flood he had seen in a quarter of a century. Many of the worst images on TV are from Zhejiang province – the downpour triggered a mudslide that buried houses and killed two people in Changshan county.
“The crops were looking good, but now they’re under about two meters of water,” Mr Fu told Xinhua. He owns more than 25 hectares of rice fields in Longyou county in Zhejiang.
The Flood Control and Drought Relief HQ in Zhejiang said the disaster had afflicted about 2.59 million people in the province and caused an economic loss of nearly five billion yuan (€540 million).
“I can only save 20 per cent of the crops at most and the flood will at least lead to an economic loss of 500,000 yuan (€54,000),” he said, a huge sum for a Chinese farmer. The torrential rain has driven the nearby Qiantang River to the highest flood peak since 1955.
The food spike of some 40 per cent came as vegetable, fruit and grain output had fallen by 20 per cent, the agriculture ministry said.
This will worsen inflation data this month, which is already riding high.
“The heavy rains have ruined much farmland, which has brought up the food prices, and it’s estimated that prices will continue to rise for about two weeks,” said Jin Changlin, an official at Zhejiang’s agriculture department.
In Jiangsu province, the beautiful city of Suzhou was hit by more than 200 millimetres of rainfall, while water at the Tai Lake had already exceeded flood alert levels.
The flooding and landslides have blocked roads and railways, but aid is getting through and the army has been mobilised, although some respite is in sight as the weather bureau reckons the skies will clear up today.