3,500 Dams on the Brink: China’s Tofu Dreg Disaster Swallows Entire Towns

China has long been criticized for its tofu dreg infrastructure, which shocked the world earlier this year when fake steel linked to Chinese suppliers was blamed for a building collapse in Bangkok. Now in June, the spotlight has shifted back to China, not because of a disaster involving exports, but because of crumbling infrastructure within its own borders. Thousands of aging tofu dreg dams face the risk of collapse as record floods sweep across the In theory, this part of China should have been safe. Billions of dollars were spent to build strong flood control walls. But reality tells a different story. This is the worst flooding since 1998, and behind every statistic lie heartbreaking stories. Elderly people clinging to rooftops, shivering in the cold, in raging waters, a mother and her young child holding onto a pole, desperately trying to survive. So what is the cause? The tofu dreg dams, poor management, or something else? By late June 2025, Hunan, Hubei, and neighboring regions endured record-breaking rainfall, unleashing devastating floods across towns and villages. In Songzhi County, the mountain town of Badagongshan was buried under 26.2 inches of rain, while Wuxia Station in Longshan County recorded 25.5 inches, turning once-bustling streets into rivers and homes into islands cut off from the outside world. The Guoli River swelled more than 23 feet, swallowing entire neighborhoods in Longshan and pushing the Lishui River to its highest flood level in 2025. Over 400,000 people were affected, with more than 112,000 forced to abandon their homes. In Hunan, three people tragically died, trapped helplessly in an underground garage as floodwaters surged in. The dead perished in tragedy, but the living are also struggling. In Guizhou, an eyeglass shop owner broke down in tears as his livelihood was washed away. Over 20 years of work gone in an instant. We still owe the bank, and we have three young children. It feels like the sky is collapsing. In Xiamen County, Hunan, within just an hour the entire town disappeared underwater. Shipments worth hundreds of thousands of dollars vanished. In Songzhi, a shop lost everything on its very opening day. Their tears revealed the fragility of an entire local economy, yet the disaster did not stop there. The town collapsed as infrastructure crumbled under relentless flooding. Roads and bridges were swept away. Landslides cut off villages, and entire communities were left divided. The consequences of history. According to a 2013 study, more than 45,000 dams have been built along the Yangtze River basin, a testament to decades of planning and engineering. These dams stretch across provinces like Hubei and Hunan, constructed to tame the power of the river. Hunan alone has more than 13,600 reservoirs and dams, about 4,000 of them in the rain-soaked western mountains. Hubei is home to the Three Gorges Dam, the world's largest hydroelectric plant, a symbol of China's engineering might. Yet this disaster has prompted difficult questions. With so many dams, why do severe floods still happen every year? Why do people still lose their homes to walls of water? Why are lives still swept away despite the dams, the promises, and the billions spent? The answer in part lies in history. According to China's Ministry of Water Resources, there are now over 98,000 dams nationwide, most built between the 1950s and 1970s. This was the Great Leap Forward era, when Mao Zedong's regime prioritized fast and many over safety. Dams mushroomed across the country, built by untrained farmers using cheap materials and crude designs. Over time, they earned a troubling nickname, Tofu Dams, fragile, unstable, and prone to collapse. During the dam-building boom, many experts raised warnings, but their voices were dismissed. Among them was hydrologist Chen Xing, who cautioned that constructing too many dams and reservoirs, particularly in Hunan province, could raise groundwater levels to dangerous heights and trigger major disasters. Yet during the Great Leap Forward, political leaders chose speed and scale, ignoring experts like Chen and pressing ahead with massive construction. From the 1950s to the 1970s, China built around 87,000 reservoirs, many of them of tofu-dreg quality. The consequences have been dire. Public data from hydrologists show that between 1954 and 2021, a total of 3,558 dams collapsed across China, averaging more than 50 dam failures every year. In 2012, John Jackson of Probe International made a chilling statement in his study on China's hydropower projects. He wrote, by building over 130 large dams in a seismically active region, China is conducting a giant experiment with potentially catastrophic consequences for its economy and people. In 2023, a research team led by Duminda Pereira of the United Nations University concluded that many Chinese dams are now over 50 years old and were built to poor standards, making their risks increasingly dangerous. As these dams age, they lose stability, and in the face of harsher climate conditions, that instability could spell disaster. The shadows of Banqiao and Three Gorges Beyond the problem of tofu-dreg dams in the past, there is another issue, the way the government manages its dams today. Instead of prioritizing human safety, the focus often remains on protecting the dams themselves. In many cases, authorities have released massive volumes of water without warning nearby communities, leaving villages submerged overnight. The Banqiao Dam disaster of 1975 in Henan Province stands as a grim reminder. According to Britannica, authorities discharged floodwaters without any warning to the public. The result was one of the deadliest dam failures in history. According to Human Rights Watch, 230,000 people perished. The tragedy was covered up for 30 years. It showed that in an authoritarian system, human safety can be The Three Gorges Dam, China's modern pride, has not escaped controversy either. Touted as a project of the century to control floods, it nevertheless saw more than 54 million people suffer severe losses in 2020. Officials still claim that the dam mitigated the disaster despite the reality on the ground. People sacrificed. What could be more cruel and sacrificing an entire city just to protect the capital? In 2023, the BBC reported that the city of Zhuozhou was deliberately flooded to safeguard Beijing. The residents of Zhuozhou had no choice. They were forced to bear the full force of the rising waters so that the capital could remain safe. The result was destroyed homes, shattered lives, and growing resentment in Hubei. The question remains, why are the lives and property of hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizens always treated as expendable? Worse still, disaster relief is also tainted by corruption. After the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, 45 billion yuan was donated. But an audit later revealed that over 80% of it, around 24 billion yuan, remained untouched, never reaching the communities in need. Even basic supplies like bottled water, instant noodles, and medical equipment sat stockpiled in warehouses. Some left to expire, while victims continued to live in tents. The Red Cross Society of China was accused of purchasing tents and vehicles at inflated prices. A 2009 report from Tsinghua University even stated that 80% of the donated funds ultimately flowed into government coffers. In that void, it was the people themselves who took responsibility. They pooled food, blankets, and money to bring to flood-stricken areas. One ordinary citizen said, if the government does not show up, then we will show up for each other. A simple statement, yet it laid bare a bitter truth. Trust in the state is collapsing. A system on the brink of collapse. By late June 2025, the situation grew even more dire. More than 3,500 dams were flagged as being at risk of failure, and 226 levees overflowed near Dongting Lake, sending floodwaters into towns and farmlands. The Three Gorges Dam, now severely destabilized, was forced to release water into provinces already submerged. Crops were wiped out, roads buckled, bridges snapped. According to Vice Minister of Water Resources Wei Shanzhong in 2021, over 31,000 dams had never undergone safety inspections. That number revealed the grim reality. Millions of lives are effectively living beneath water bombs hanging overhead. Day by day, people feel more fear and despair, wondering whether the next flood will sweep away their homes, loved ones, and everything they own. The devastating floods in Hunan and Hubei did not just destroy houses, they crushed entire lives. Families were left to fend for themselves as Tofu Dregs Dams collapsed. Warnings were ignored, relief arrived too late. Trapped in rising waters, people lost not only their homes, but also their safety, dignity, and hope. This disaster exposes a system that cares more about a dark image than protection, where citizens are sacrificed, silenced, and abandoned. This is not merely a natural disaster, it is a man-made crisis born of indifference, silence, and broken promises. And it is the people who are left to pay the price.