China Ravaged by Floods and Droughts

Welcome to Crossroads. A combination of flood and droughts is currently hitting China. Now between January and June of this year, the damage caused by natural disasters, they claim, at least on the surface, that it's close to 13 billion dollars in damage. Remember, Chinese currency that goes a lot further. But while the recent disasters are being framed as, you know, once in a decade or even once in a hundred years incidents, a look back reveals that a similar barrage of floods and droughts, they've hit China for the last several years, for months at a time, year on year, causing large-scale damage not only to homes and agriculture, but also notably to the food supply. Now first, let's have a look at the current state of things. And again, just keep in mind, this is just what's being reported on the surface claims of the CCP. It could be worse. Reuters said that natural disasters such as flooding, drought, and extreme temperatures cost China 93.16 billion yuan. That's about 12.83 billion U.S. dollars in the first half of this year, with almost 33 million people affected, according to, again, the government, the CCP. They note that heavy snow, 22 strong earthquakes, including one of 7.1 magnitude in the northwestern region of Xinjiang, landslides and mudslides in southwestern regions, and flooding on the Yellow River and in southern provinces all added to the burden. It says the 32.38 million people affected included 322 who died or disappeared. Keep in mind, again, oftentimes the numbers are doctored. We don't really know the full impact, but they cite this to the ministry, under the CCP, telling you this during a news briefing. They say about 856,000 people faced emergency resettlement, 23,000 houses were destroyed, and around 3.17 million hectares of crops damaged. They say the number of people impacted compares with just 48.76 million people for the whole of 2023, when 95 people died or went missing, according again to the CCP's reporting. Now, they say the impact on the economy in January to June this year was also worse than the year earlier period, when the country logged 38.23 billion yuan worth of loss. It was the biggest first-half disaster-related loss since 2019, because they were having similar disasters at that time, according to the data they say available on the Emergency Management Ministry website. Now, again, keep in mind that these numbers, they're just what the CCP is claiming to the public. They will not say things they don't want to say. But even aside from that, the numbers the CCP has, that's limited to what local officials are willing to tell the CCP. And even the numbers the local officials get, that's based on their own investigations and what they're looking into, and nothing that they're not looking into. You factor in the recent CCP law that makes it so if you spread information that damages the economy or damages the interests of the CCP, you risk going to jail. And that starts raising some other problems, especially at a time when the CCP is trying its hardest to make China look appealing to investors. You know, one of the cited problems previously with these natural disasters in China, because again, they've been going on year after year, I'll show you the data in a bit. One of the biggest issues you've had with it, the same thing you had during the Great Leap Forward in China, when you had local provinces saying, hey, highest grain yield we've ever had, when in reality, they had famines. The local officials want to look good to the CCP. So they want to make it look like they prevented disaster. They want to make it look like they've saved lives. They want to make it look like they fixed things, like they acted, and they minimized the possible impact. Because if they go to the CCP officials and say, hey, hundreds of thousands of people died, hundreds of thousands in damages or whatever, it looks bad on them. They're not willing to say it. The CCP will punish them because they've failed to do their jobs or failed to protect the interests of the CCP. They're not willing to make themselves look bad. And so the incentive is oftentimes to hide information or maybe not even investigate it fully in the first place. Maybe they'll only investigate the area where they did take action, but none of the other areas. This is why it's so complicated with these types of numbers. Now, with this said, the situation on the ground looks serious. There's been a recent wave of flooding across China. Let me show you all some footage after water breached a 740-foot stretch of a dike at China's Dongting Lake, and this is in Hunan province. That's the second largest freshwater lake in the country's south. The breach was about 32 feet on the afternoon the breach occurred, but it expanded to nearly 500 feet early the next morning. 5,700 residents had to be relocated, again, according to Chinese state media. More than 2,300 rescue workers started working to seal the breached dike as well. Of course, remember, the main source of news on this stuff is CCTV, one of the main mouthpieces of the Chinese Communist Party. But the flooding has also been bad along the Yangtze River, one of the country's major rivers. Reports are saying that intense rainfall in southern China have caused water levels to rise in the Yangtze River, and cities downstream like Nanjing, they've had issues and flood warnings and banned boats and other forms of vessels from entering the sector of the Yangtze River because of this. China's Ministry of Water Resources had reported that water levels in sections in the middle and lower courses of the Yangtze River exceeded warning levels. As a brief overview of this, Reuters said that days of torrential rain, flash floods and landslides across southern China have forced authorities to enact emergency plans as swollen rivers threaten to overflow further, potentially disrupting lives of millions. And it's the annual flooding season started earlier in China this year, as southern province has battled with intense storms that have swept away bridges and destroyed low-rise homes, devastated agricultural output and submerged numerous cities. Now, in some areas, reports are saying the floods are the worst they've had in decades. Now, South China Morning Post says this, they say the city of Guilin is experiencing its worst flood since 1998, with villagers trapped in their homes, shops underwater and one railway station suspended as heavy rainfall continues to batter southern China. It says authorities of Guilin issued a level one flood emergency alert on Wednesday morning and notes that by that evening, water levels of the city's section of the Lijiang River had risen to 487 feet. That's just over eight feet beyond the alert level and just over the 1998 peak of 486 feet, according to state broadcaster, again, CCTV. It says the devastating floods of 1998, they lasted two months and wreaked havoc on 24 provinces, a lot of China. A total of 3,004 people were killed, another 220 million were affected, with countless homes destroyed. And again, according to the CCP, it might be even worse, you never know. Now, one town in China was hit by an entire year's worth of rain in just one day. Dafengying in China's Henan area was hit with extreme storms and according to national weather forecasters in China, they logged 24 inches of rainfall in 24 hours. This is compared to the annual average of 31 inches of rainfall in that area. Now, given this, you know, with all this in context, last month, CCP leader Xi Jinping called for all out efforts to fight the impact of the Meaning, of course, that state media and local officials, well, they have some extra incentive to demonstrate they're doing something. Now, the reality is that the damage was not just last month or this month. It's been going on for a while. And it's been looking pretty serious, actually, for a while. I'll be talking more about this after we come back from a quick break. Experts agree one of the best ways to protect against financial uncertainty is to diversify your portfolio. Learn how physical gold and silver can secure your retirement funds from today's economic challenges with a gold IRA from American Hartford Gold. You can safeguard your wealth with no penalties or taxes when you transfer your current qualifying retirement accounts. Call now and our precious metals specialists will send you a free information kit, no cost or obligation. 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BBC said in April, the authorities have evacuated 110,000 people from their homes in Guangdong as days of heavy rain caused massive flooding in China's most populous province. It notes that footage on state media and online showed large swathes of land inundated by the floods and rescuers ferrying people and lifeboats in waist deep water. Several major rivers have burst their banks and authorities are closely monitoring, quote, dangerously high water levels. They warned that the level of a river in northern Guangdong hit a once in 100 years peak on Monday morning again back in April, though they noted that at least by that time it had not yet happened. Much of Guangdong is part of the low-lying Pearl River Delta, which is prone to floods due to the They note as well that Delta is a major manufacturing base in China and one of the country's most densely populated regions, with Guangdong alone home to around 127 million people. Now Daily Mail, also in April, said China's once in a century floods, 127 million on alert as cities are submerged, homes and cars swept away, and tens of thousands evacuated after deadly storms last region dubbed factory floor of the world. Now again, take that into context. If in April, the manufacturing hub of China was getting, you know, submerged by storms, how has that gone given the fact that this has continued since that time? Month by month, same thing, and it's getting worse. It also seems the disasters again are not getting any better. Now we can see this, for example, in the recent warnings issued by CCP leader Xi Jinping. If the situation was improving, it's not likely he'd make an alert like he did just last month at the tail end of the disaster, unless there were other reasons for it, which is also a possibility given the CCP may be looking for scapegoats, right, for the troubled economy saying, hey, it's not me, it's the storm, it wasn't me who destroyed the economy, it was the rain, right, could be a possibility as well. But regardless, during the time of really heavy sensitivity in China right now, they wouldn't want to make themselves look bad, especially to foreign investors. But the damage from natural disasters, it's actually not just impacting homes or infrastructure or manufacturing. Most importantly, maybe, the damage is also hitting China's food supplies. This is from the beginning of the month. In fact, the economist said in Guishan County, on the plains of central China, fields that are usually green with maize plants are brown and dusty. It has barely rained for two months, and village wells are running dry. And that's a certain level of hardship is to be expected in parts of central and northern China. Most of the provinces in the north where 40% of the country's population lives fall below the threshold for water scarcity sent by the United Nations. In the southern, torrential rains are more common. Flooding and landslides in the region killed dozens of people last month. Thousands had to be evacuated. But southern China has also been hit by droughts in each of the past three years. Attributing any single weather event to climate change, they say, is complicated. But scientists expect China will increasingly experience periods of heavier rainfall, as well as longer periods of dryness in the coming years. And keep in mind, whether it's too much rain or not enough, both of these are going to impact crops. Both of them will destroy your crops. They know this is going to make an already difficult challenge even harder. With just 6% of the world's freshwater, China must quench the thirst of 20% of the world's people. To do this, the country's leaders have long relied on big infrastructure projects to move water from wetter to drier places. As the demand again for water increases and the weather becomes less predictable, that process again gets more complicated. They can't predict it like they used to. So if they're expecting the problem to keep getting worse, as they're saying, this does seem to be accurate based on the trend. Even a few years ago, the floods and droughts were devastating in China. And now they're suggesting the recent wave this year has been even worse than previous years. If things are really set to get worse next year, and the year after that, and so on, this could mean some serious things for the future of the CCP. And again, on one of the big problems, this is impacting the food supply. The cool down says this. Northern and central China are suffering from months of prolonged drought and extreme heat, which is prompting Chinese farmers to hold off on planting. They're not planting their crops. This has led to a delay in production of popular crops such as rice, corn, and commonly used herbs such as mugwort. And one of the farmers told them this. With advanced technology and artificial rainfall, there'd be some hope for us, but there's really no rain. Average folks like us will face total crop failure. That's just how it is. And another farmer echoed this grim sentiment saying, quote, if it really doesn't rain, the crops will all die. And this drought will significantly threaten China's food supply, which is already a concern in a country of over 1.4 billion people, as well as the global food supply. But what worries experts most, it says, is what will happen in the seasons to come, next year and the year after and so on, if these droughts continue. Now remember, the problem is not just enough rain, it's too much rain. South China Morning Post said this. China is set to see a drop in its early season rice harvest after recent bouts of extreme rainfall in major production areas, putting pressure on annual output at a crop to be gathered later this month and estimated to account for 13% of China's total rice production is sprouting prematurely in the southern and eastern areas of the country after heavy rains that have persisted since mid-June, according to local farmers and agricultural analysis. Now something that's actually really telling is the type of food the Chinese Communist Party started importing recently. Remember, the CCP has had a policy of grain self-sufficiency for a long time. It has not been able to achieve that, and now some of the imports they have suggest something weird might be going on. I'll be talking about this more exclusively on EpicTV.com. That's the uncensored streaming platform of The Epic Times. So if you're watching on YouTube, Facebook, XRumble, there's a link in the description below that you can click on to get access to the rest of this episode. And not only will you get that, but also my whole library of and hard-hitting documentaries on issues that really matter, like the Chinese Communist Party's 100-year plan to defeat the United States, which I expose in my documentary, The Final War. The CCP is one of the biggest threats to this country. They're using things like video games, entertainment, movies, culture to subvert and influence the next generation. And this unrestricted war against our country is one of the scariest but least understood issues of our time because it's not tangible. There's no tanks or bombs. It's all being done through soft power and different methods of ideological subversion. I've spent over a decade investigating the CCP's subversion, and it's such an important issue that I dedicated my career to warning people about the threats of the CCP. If you'd like to find out more about what exactly the CCP is plotting against America, then watch The Final War. You can find the link in the description below, and I'll show you all a trailer before we go exclusively to EpicTV.com for the rest of this episode. I'll see you all there. The greatest threat facing the United States is the CCP. The Epoch Times investigation team had studied the CCP for years, but what we uncovered was yielding evidence beyond our imagination. With Chairman Mao, with the Prime Minister, our talks have been characterized by frankness. The Clinton administration said, oh, don't worry about it. This will be a poison pill for China. China's strategic goal is to make sure that the U.S. has four enemies, and one of them must be a terrorist group. We are giving of our life's blood so that the Chinese Communist Party can survive and thrive.