Why China’s Flood Disasters Keep Happening Every Summer I China Insights

Now, looking out, it's like a vast ocean. The supermarket here is almost submerged up to the roof. These warehouses have all collapsed, and in our village, the water has already reached the first floor. Do you see that? It's already flooded up to here, up to the roof. Everyone, sit tight. Take safety precautions and evacuate to the second floor. If you need to go to the second floor, go now. If you need to get to the roof, get to the roof. This is the real scene of the collapse of the Lulin Reservoir Dam in Hengzhou City, Nanning, Guangxi, China on July 6, 2026. Friends, almost every summer, China faces all kinds of severe and rare flooding disasters. In 2022, heavy rainfall in Sichuan and Gansu affected 460,000 people. In 2021, the massive flood in Zhengzhou instantly trapped and took the lives of many people in the subway. In 2020, record-breaking rainfall caused severe flooding in southern China, with 38 million people affected, more than the entire population of Canada. In 2019, 377 rivers in China exceeded flood warning levels, and 16 provinces and cities issued 15,000 flash flood disaster alerts. In 2018, catastrophic rainstorms in the western region affected 1.4 million people. Every year brings unprecedented natural disasters, and every year we face once-in-a-century extremes. Flood prevention is a yearly battle, and every year decisions must be made. Why does China face this persistent curse of summer floods? And what is really behind it? Let's first focus our attention on the Lulian Reservoir in Guangxi this time. On July 5, Typhoon Meisak crossed the Beibu Gulf, made a second landfall in Vietnam, and then charged straight into Guangxi, China, bringing terrifying, extremely heavy rainfall. In Bafang Village, Luyu Town, Binyang County, the 24-hour rainfall soared to 713 millimeters. What does that mean? It's equivalent to the sky dumping one-third of the area's annual rainfall in just one day. It all poured down at once. In Nanning, the records for 3-hour, 6-hour, 12-hour, and 24-hour rainfall were all broken overnight. In Lulian Village, Shaoqi Town, Hangzhou City, the villagers had no idea that the Lulian Reservoir above their heads, with a total storage capacity of over 93 million cubic meters and a height of 42 meters, was quietly approaching the most dangerous moment of their lives. At the most dangerous moment, let's look at this breathtaking timeline. At 10 p.m. on July 5, the Lulian Reservoir Service Station issued Notice No. 1, stating that due to continuous rainfall, the floodgates would be open that night, just a few hours later. The situation took a sudden turn for the worse. At 2.30 a.m. on July 6, the reservoir's water level soared to 111.2 meters, which was 0.91 meters higher than the designed flood level. In the early hours of the morning, the authorities issued an emergency notice. At 6 a.m., all the floodgates would be fully opened. But at that time, the vast majority of villagers downstream were still asleep and never received the notification. Because Liang Wei, a resident of Dongyu Street in Hangzhou City, said that his parents lived about 5 kilometers from the Lulian Reservoir. He said they only heard about the flood discharge notice at 8 a.m., and a little after 9 o'clock, the dam collapsed. In other words, the tens of thousands of people downstream actually had only one hour to evacuate. By around 10.20 a.m. on July 6, the catastrophic consequences appeared. The rapidly rising floodwaters reached a level of 116 meters. According to the design, with a flood level of 110.29 meters, the dam crest elevation should be about 114 to 115 meters. In other words, at this point, the water level was already 1 to 2 meters higher than the dam crest, and there was a full-scale overflow of floodwaters cascading down the dam. Scoured by high-speed flows, the Lulian Reservoir gave way. Two 50-meter breaches opened in the dam. Muddy floodwaters surged, tearing through the concrete road leading to the top. According to Mr. Ban from Yapo Village, who was interviewed by Jianmian News on the 7th, the Lulian Reservoir didn't collapse just once, but breached twice in succession. The first breach happened at around 10.30 in the morning. Right after that, the second flood peak hit, and its impact was even greater than the first. The gate and the entire wall in front of his house were completely swept away by the flood. Many houses along the road were not just flooded, but completely flattened by the water. Pay attention, not just flooded, but flattened. Just imagine the force of that impact. Local elders in their 90s told reporters that in their whole lives, they had never seen water on such a massive scale. From multiple videos shot by people at the scene, you can see that many people were swept away by the raging floodwaters and carried downstream. Looking into the distance, you could see many heads bobbing up and down on the water's surface, and some people were calling for help. The scene was extremely tragic. And among those heads in the water was a 15-year-old boy named Gan Chang-nan, a recent junior high graduate from Yunbiao Town. On the morning of the 6th, he and his uncle left home riding an electric bike. When they reached a section of National Highway 209, they were suddenly swept away by the surging floodwaters. Since then, he went missing. That afternoon, his sister, Ms. Gun, was unable to reach her family, and could only call the police in tears. And failings like theirs are not uncommon, even in the 5th production team of Yaopo Village, which has only 300 or 400 people. According to preliminary statistics, 12 people are missing, and that's just from the Luyilan Reservoir. On the same morning, the Yunbiao Reservoir, Shanchashui Reservoir, and Chaiyan Reservoir and Hengxiao City all experienced dangerous situations. The top of the dam at Luwang Reservoir in Binyang County was also overtopped by water, and the entire Yunbiao Town was submerged. In Nankang Village, which is 8 kilometers from the Luyilan Reservoir, floodwaters reached the village entrance at 7.30 in the morning. Just one hour later, the water had already flooded the first floor of the houses in the village. In other words, in just one hour, the water level in the village rose by a full 4 meters! This village has 6,390 residents. At noon on the 7th, the village party secretary told reporters via text message that nearly 1,700 people were still stranded by the floodwaters and were in urgent need of food and drinking water. Their cell phones were also about to run out of battery. Meanwhile, on Shiziling, the mountain behind Yapo Village where the Luyilan Reservoir breach occurred, a scene reminiscent of World War II refugees unfolded because the originally designated relocation area had been destroyed by the subsequent flood surge. Over a thousand villagers had no choice but to climb up Shiziling, ranging in age from infants just a few months old to elderly people in their 80s and 90s. But there were no shelters from the rain on the mountain, so everyone was soaked, waiting from morning until late at night without receiving any food or water. Children started to develop fevers. An elderly person was bitten by a snake that had escaped from a downstream farm. Because there was no medicine, they could only wait helplessly. The batteries in their flashlights were already dead, and their phones were running out of power too. The road down the mountain had long been completely blocked by fallen trees and landslides. Villagers told reporters that the real situation was much worse than what was shown in the videos. A lot of people had been swept away. Seeing this, you might sigh and think, this typhoon was just too powerful. Even the reservoir couldn't withstand it. But some observant netizens dug up a photo taken on June 16th last year. In that photo, there were already obvious signs of subsidence on the top section of the Lulan Reservoir Dam. In other words, the hidden danger that led to today's dam collapse at Lulan Reservoir had already started to show a year ago. But for an entire year, no one did anything about it. My friends, this is what's happening now in Lulan, Guangxi, China. But is this flood really just the typhoon's fault? Why does the same story seem to play out almost every year across China? Zhengzhou in 2021, Poyang Lake in 2020, 377 rivers in China in 2019, the Western Region in 2018, Wuhan in 2016, and even earlier, the Banqiao Dam disaster in Henan in 1975. These are all part of the same script. It's never changed. Only the place names in years keep getting swapped out. But why is that? The answer lies hidden in a carefully covered up chapter of the Chinese Communist Party's 70-year history. And the very first brick of that history was laid in 1958. That year, construction began on the Lulan Reservoir, and 12 years later, in 1970, its main structure was completed. What kind of year was 1958? It was the era of the Great Leap Forward, the time when, as bold as a person dared to be, that's how much land they'd try to cultivate. It was the era of striving to finish tough projects in just three months, when political progress was prioritized over engineering quality, even if it meant sacrificing the latter. And the Lulan Reservoir is a product of that era. What's more, it's a homogenous earth dam. What does that mean? It means the entire dam relies mainly on compacted soil to prevent seepage and to withstand pressure. This kind of dam has a fatal weakness. As soon as water flows over the top, the fast-moving water will strip away the soil of the dam layer by layer. It can go from a small gully forming on the slope to the entire breach widening in just a matter of tens of minutes. According to the normal design lifespan of a dam, it's usually 50 years. But the Lulan Reservoir is already 66 years old this year, well past retirement age, yet it's still in use. How is it still being used? We'll talk about that later. Its use during the non-flood season is actually what led to its collapse today. In 2019, Tian Yitong, director of the Department of Flood and Drought Disaster Prevention at the Ministry of Water Resources of the Chinese Communist Party, personally admitted at a regular State Council press conference that out of more than 98,000 reservoirs in China, over 66,000 had previously been classified as dangerous or problematic. In addition, there are more than 16,000 reservoirs that are currently considered dangerous, bringing the total to 82,000, which accounts for 84% of all reservoirs in China. In other words, on average, 8 out of every 10 reservoirs in China are classified as dangerous or problematic. And most of these reservoirs are siblings of the Lulan Reservoir. They were products of the Great Leap Forward era, built in a rush. Back then, to meet political deadlines, the designs were incomplete, surveys were insufficient, materials were skimped on, and floodgates were installed only if they happened to be available. Now, all these reservoirs have reached the end of their service life, and some are even operating well past their intended lifespan. Actually, the investigation and statistics on dangerous and problematic reservoirs really began with an incident, the 1975 Banqiao Dam failure. At that time, more than 60 reservoirs failed, including two medium-sized ones, Banqiao Reservoir and Ximatan Reservoir, which together caused as many as 240,000 deaths. It's said that the initial investigation report at the time was not made public. All that was revealed was that about one-third of the country's reservoirs were considered dangerous or problematic. Later, it's said that the central government urgently allocated funds and demanded that these dangerous reservoirs be addressed. Now, more than a decade has passed, and a huge amount of money has been invested. The second investigation report came out, and it turned out that not only had the number of dangerous reservoirs not decreased, but it had actually increased. As long as these dangerous reservoirs remain unfixed, every flood season, they're like a sword hanging over the heads of the people at all times. You might say, well, why not just fix them or tear them down as soon as possible? But it's not that simple. Two years ago, People's Daily published an article saying that the cleanup and rectification of small hydropower stations along the Yangtze River Economic Belt was basically complete. It sounded impressive and polished. But if you read carefully, you'll notice it's said that from the end of 2018 to the end of 2020, there were more than 3,500 hydropower stations nationwide located in ecological protection zones that were seriously damaging the environment. They were removed from the list. More than 20,000 stations were rectified. This removal's important. What does it mean? It doesn't mean they were demolished. Nope, it just means they're no longer counted. In other words, these hydropower stations weren't physically dismantled. They still exist there. It's just that the CCP's statistics no longer include them. Why doesn't the CCP just tear them down? Tian Shui-bin, the former vice minister of the Ministry of Water Resources, once said something very honest. He said that removing a small hydropower station is just as difficult as building a new one. There are technical reasons, but even more so, there are economic obstacles. The most critical issue with China's reservoirs is that they have never been purely flood control projects. To control flooding, the reservoir's water level must be kept low. That way, when the flood season is severe and there's a lot of rain, the reservoir has enough empty space to hold the flood water or reduce the flood peak. Then, the reservoir stores the water and releases it during the dry season for irrigation, serving both flood control and drought relief purposes. But reservoirs in China aren't just built for flood control and drought release. On the contrary, they serve many purposes, including power generation, irrigation, aquaculture, and even as tourist attractions, among others. But in this way, the goal of flood control ends up completely contradicting the other objectives. Why is that? As we just mentioned, for flood control, the reservoir's water level needs to be kept low. But when the water level is low, it's impossible to achieve the goals of power generation, irrigation, or aquaculture. In 2016, heavy rain in Jiangxi caused the Bintian Reservoir on the Bintian River, a to discharge, flooding several villages, and displacing nearly 20,000 residents. The reservoir also supports fish farming. There are a total of 1,000 staff members and workers, with just over 20 of them funded by the national government. The rest all rely on the economic benefits generated by the reservoir. If the reservoir is kept at a high water level, it produces more electricity. More water can be sold, more fish can be raised, and they grow fatter. As a result, the income of the reservoir staff and workers is higher. Another example is the Xinanjiang Reservoir in Hongxiang, Zhejiang, which is meant to serve tourism. When the water level is high, it's called the Qiandao Lake Tourist Area. If the water level is low, then there's no scenery and, naturally, no tourism value. So the water level has to stay high. There are many more reasons like this. Another point worth mentioning is that hydropower is China's second-largest energy source, second only to coal. And hydropower accounts for almost one-fifth of China's total energy production. That's also why China has been continuously building water conservancy dams for many years. And there's no sign of this trend slowing down. In order for the many reservoirs to create better economic benefits and achieve goals like power generation, irrigation, aquaculture, tourism, and so on, the water level must be kept high. And the higher, the better. So when you look at China's reservoirs, you can see that as flood control projects, they need to keep water levels low. But as economic projects, they have to keep water levels high. How do they resolve this contradiction? Most of the time, they operate according to economic needs and only scramble to lower the water level when a typhoon is coming. And the result of scrambling at the last minute is exactly what happened at the Lulai Reservoir. The first warning was issued at 10 p.m. By 2.30 a.m., the water level had already been exceeded. At 6 a.m., they fully opened the floodgates, and by 10.20 a.m., the dam had collapsed. A calm and orderly release turned into a desperate emergency discharge. The villagers downstream are always the last to know. So what do you do when the situation becomes so critical that even the dam itself is in danger and could collapse at any moment? In 2016, the Gudun Reservoir near Wuhan Hubei, which was also built during the Great Leap Forward era, faced heavy rainfall. At that time, reservoir staff discovered more than a dozen seepage points on the outer slope of the dam, with large areas of water leakage. This meant the dam was already on the verge of failing and could collapse at any time. There were more than 30 villages and over 70,000 people living downstream of the dam. So what could be done? What did the Chinese authorities do at the time? The Hubei Flood Control Headquarters ordered all the reservoirs in the Jiushui River Basin, along with 180 reservoirs near Wuhan, to release floodwaters. Why? Because they would rather flood all the downstream areas first than let the dam collapse, which would be catastrophic. And what's even more suffocating is that even after the Guntun Reservoir released water, the water level kept rising. Finally, armed police used a ton of explosives to blast the spillway floor, saving the reservoir. Though the dam held, downstream levels at Jiushui and Luzi Alley topped 33 meters. In Phoenix Town, Wuhan, a levee breached, forcing 10,000 villagers to evacuate overnight. This is one of the unwritten rules of Chinese reservoirs. Protecting the dam takes priority over protecting the people. As we were recording this episode, the latest footage was still coming in from Guangxi. In the early morning of July 7, after an elderly person in Fulong Village, Yanbiu Town, Hengzhou, was swept away by floodwaters, he clung tightly to a floating object in a eucalyptus grove and hung onto a tree for a full eight hours before being rescued by the rescue team. According to the report from the Second Flood Control and Disaster Relief Press Conference in Nanning, Guangxi, at 11 a.m. on July 7, there were four deaths and eight missing in Hengzhou, with 84,700 people affected by the disaster. The real numbers are likely far higher than the official figures. But do you think this is the worst-case scenario? The Lu Lan and Yanbiao Reservoirs we just mentioned are still reservoirs officially managed by the CCP, at least on paper. There are people in charge and people guarding them. And during flood season, they can at least send staff to be on duty at the dam. But don't forget, scattered among China's mountains and rivers, there are still a large number of decommissioned reservoirs that have just been removed from the official records but still physically stand there. These are the real tickin' time bombs. During the major flood of the Jiang River in 2016, the renowned water conservancy expert Dr. Wang Weilu analyzed that one of the reasons was that a large number of decommissioned reservoirs in the Jiang River basin were left unmanaged, unmaintained, and unoperated. So when the flood came, the dams collapsed. In 2010, the cause of that nationally famous historic flood in Zhonghua was also because an abandoned reservoir first collected water and then its dam broke, washing down all the loose soil that it accumulated over decades. So this is the cycle we see. During the Great Leap Forward era, once the chaotic, hastily built reservoirs reached the end of their service life, they turned into a vast number of dangerous and problematic reservoirs. And it's clear that the CCP neither repairs nor demolishes them. Every flood season, they have to release floodwaters. Whether or not the dam can hold is one thing, but releasing the flood inevitably means swallowing up farmland downstream. Year after year, this cycle repeats itself. In 1999, when Jiang Zemin visited the Sanminsha Reservoir on the Yellow River, he said something. Li Bai wrote that the waters of the Yellow River come from the sky. But that's wrong. It should be changed to, the waters of the Yellow River come from our hands. This statement was meant to boast about the greatness of the CCP's water conservancy projects. But now, 27 years later, you realize that this sentence is practically a dark prophecy. That's right. The waters of China's rivers no longer come from the sky. They come from human hands. They come from the exaggerations of the Great Leap Forward, from flawed designs that prioritize order over flood prevention, from the ruthless policy of protecting dams instead of people, from the 84% of dangerous reservoirs that are neither repaired nor demolished, and from every official's last-minute, desperate flood discharge operation. Up to now, we have no way of knowing whether the 50-some elderly people trapped in Liulin Village have been rescued, nor can we know which province or township in China will become the next Liulin next year, the year after, or three years from now. But as long as the CCP's cold-blooded system of protecting dams and interests while neglecting the people continues unabated, I'm afraid the story of Lu Lan will be hard to keep as just a story. Alright, that's all for today's discussion. Friends, if you enjoy my show, please don't forget to give me a like before you leave. New viewers, you're welcome to subscribe to True Perspective, and I'd also appreciate it if you could do me a small favor by sharing my show with your friends. Every interaction from you helps my videos reach more people. YouTube's recommendation system allows the hard work I put into preparing these videos to be seen by more friends. And don't forget about the fan recommendation feature as well. Clicking on it can help my videos spread faster and reach a wider audience. So I want to thank everyone in advance. Thank you all for watching. Let's continue to pay attention to the disaster situation in Guangxi. If you have anything you'd like to say, please be sure to share it with me in the comments section. I read every single comment. Thank you everyone. Let's meet again at the same time on Thursday. Don't miss it. Bye-bye.