Dam Collapses in Hours: 5 Flood Gates Fail, Thousands Dead, Mountain Buries 13 Buildings!

Entire mountain collapses in China, 13 buildings buried, hundreds dead and missing. China's $60 million dam upgrade collapses in hours as gates fail, five floodgates fail, thousands dead. China's $1.5 billion offshore solar farm built to survive. Category 4 typhoons collapsed in one night. China's biggest fiscal crisis, losing hope in the future, 58 million abandoned social security businesses choose jail over payments. Trump releases declassified documents exposing China's 2020 election interference and intelligence cover-up. Welcome to RedWall, where we examine major world events with clarity context and thoughtful analysis. Entire mountain collapses in China, 13 buildings buried, hundreds dead and missing. On the morning of July 17, a massive section of mountain cliff gave way near the Wujiang River in Chongqing's Sancha area, sending huge rocks crashing down and burying more than a dozen residential buildings in seconds. The collapse occurred around 9.08 a.m., with a loud roar that witnesses compared to an explosion. Thick dust filled the air as rocks the size of small buildings tumbled down, swallowing homes and pushing several structures straight into the river below. Eyewitnesses described pure chaos. One local resident, a man who lives near the agricultural machinery station less than 200 meters from the site, said he heard a sound like firecrackers at about 8 a.m., followed by a sudden power outage. When he looked out, he saw thick smoke rising near the river and the water turning murky. He ran outside and watched the mountain give way. I ran as fast as I could along Honggang Road, he said. The road is closed now. I don't know where I'll spend the night. Another woman who had gone down to the riverbank for fresh air was caught in the dust cloud. Visibility dropped to less than one meter. She heard a huge roar and the sound of massive rocks slamming into the water. A young man fishing nearby started running, too. She later realized the spot she had been heading toward for safety was less than 100 meters from where the rocks landed. A resident identified as Yashanshan said the area has a fireworks factory nearby. Locals first heard what sounded like a huge rockfall or explosion, then the mountain collapsed multiple times. The ground kept shaking. She saw a passenger truck get buried under the rubble. One internet report claimed the truck carried 19 people. 18 died, and only one survived by squeezing into a gap between the rocks as everything came down. The truck itself was crushed. A man who was driving to work near Hong Street heard the same explosion-like noise and at first thought a fireworks warehouse had blown up. He saw enormous rocks falling and the collapse lasting a minute or two. Dust blocked everything. He abandoned his car and ran. I ran toward the gates of my life and felt weakness in my legs, he told reporters. If his car had moved just seconds faster, he said he would have been inside the collapse zone. He heard people screaming as they jumped from their houses. Estimates of the damage vary, but reports point to 12 or 13 buildings affected. Some were completely buried, others pushed off their foundations into the river. Many of the buildings were five stories tall with multiple apartments per floor. Because it was summer vacation and the weather was hot, large numbers of people were likely home. Rough calculations suggest hundreds of residents could have been inside when the slope gave way. Rescue teams from the fire department and emergency services rushed to the scene, but the volume of rubble was enormous. Heavy equipment will be needed to dig through it. Roads leading to the area have been blocked, and more than 1,100 people have been evacuated so far. Ten people have been pulled out alive, though none were in critical condition at last report. The Ministry of Emergency Management activated its second-highest disaster response level. The collapse did not come without warning signs. The region had seen days of heavy rain beforehand saturating the soil. More troubling local accounts and images suggest the cliff had been cut or altered possibly to create more building space. Parts of the slope showed artificial holes and a column-like structure with different vegetation indicating human interference. Several residential buildings sat directly at the base or on the edge of the unstable cliff. A fireworks factory in the vicinity may have added secondary explosions after the initial collapse. In China's southwestern mountains, where steep slopes and complex geology are common, this combination of heavy rain slope cutting for development and construction too close to dangerous terrain has produced similar disasters before. The human cost is still being counted, but the speed of the collapse left little time for escape. Entire homes disappeared under tons of rock. A truck full of passengers was crushed with almost no survivors. For the people who lived there, many small business owners working in ceramics and building materials, a normal morning turned into sudden loss of everything. Official rescue efforts continue, but the scale of the rubble and the number of missing suggest the final toll will be high. In areas where development has pushed buildings onto unstable slopes, nature eventually pushes back and ordinary residents pay the price. China's $60 million dam upgrade collapses in hours as gates fail, five floodgates fail, thousands dead. Recently, the Liulan Reservoir in Hengzhou, Guangxi gave way. Nearly 100 million cubic meters of water surged downstream and swallowed villages in its path. Houses that had stood for generations or new three-story homes built with years of savings were reduced to piles of rubble and thick mud. Many families had no warning. Some were asleep when the water hit. Others tried to run but had nowhere to go. Official numbers later reported 39 deaths across Guangxi with nine still missing, including 26 from this single reservoir. Residents on the ground said the real death toll was far higher in the thousands with entire villages wiped off the map. The dam had just completed a heavily promoted safety reinforcement project in 2025 that cost hundreds of millions of yuan. Local water authorities called it a model transformation from a troubled reservoir into a showcase. Instead, it failed within hours. An investigative report by Southern Weekly that pieced together the final 24 hours through interviews, including with Xia Zhai who worked at the reservoir, appeared online and was deleted by authorities within a day. The sequence of failures was documented in detail. On the evening of July 5, heavy rain pushed water levels up. Plans to open the gates at 10 p.m. were already running late. Some downstream government offices never received the email alerts because their inboxes were full. Staff switched to WeChat. By 8.30 p.m., the reservoir began releasing water, but only at a limited rate to avoid overwhelming the river channel downstream. Workers opened five gates, yet most could only manage a 0.5-meter opening in the dark. At 10.20 p.m., water overtopped the gate structures. Data from an upstream station stopped updating. Workers had to monitor levels by eye in the storm. Then the mechanical breakdowns began. Gate number five jammed and dropped. Repairs failed and it kept sinking. Gate number three soon did the same. The reservoir still waited for approval from higher flood control authorities before fully opening the remaining gates. By the time permission came at 5.07 a.m., At 5.50 a.m., gate number five failed completely. Two gates stayed stuck. The others never reached full opening height. Staff evacuated at 6.18 a.m., as collapse looked imminent. At 9.20 a.m., a 30-meter breach opened on the eastern side, followed by a much larger failure of the main dam. An original design feature meant to act as a last defense made things worse. A weaker self-destruct spillway sat beside the main dam and was supposed to give way in extreme floods relieving pressure. Years of illegal heavy truck traffic had compacted the soil so thoroughly that the structure became as hard as concrete and refused to break. Reservoir staff could not get permission or equipment in time to blow it up or excavate it. Calls to the local mayor went unanswered. Private excavators said storm-damaged roads made it impossible to reach the site. Residents added another layer. Yang Dingchen from Yingbao Village said the gates were not opened earlier because a private fish farming operator inside the reservoir wanted time to pull in the nets and save the stock. The dispute dragged on through the night. By morning, the nets tore anyway and the dam collapsed. Zhaoya Liulan Village resident said the same thing protecting a few loads of fish had been treated as more important than the lives of tens of thousands of people downstream. A water resources expert who reviewed the case said the disaster was human-made on multiple levels. After the expensive upgrade, the spillway's maximum flow capacity had actually been cut by roughly 35 percent compared with the original open-channel design. Large infrastructure projects elsewhere, including the Pinglu Canal, had also changed natural drainage patterns and funneled more water into the area than old models predicted. Yet daily operations still relied on primitive visual monitoring because automated systems had been broken for years. The final quality acceptance for the reinforcement work had never been completed more than a decade after an earlier round of repairs. This pattern is not unique to Liulan. Thousands of aging reservoirs across China suffer from similar neglected maintenance and shoddy construction as local governments buried in debt cut spending on safety. When floods threaten, many operators release water without warning. The legal framework contains no binding requirement to give advance notice to downstream residents. Without a warning, officials can later blame extreme weather and avoid compensation claims. With a warning, victims would have evidence to hold the government accountable. The same unannounced releases have hit communities in Shandong and sent the Hun River flooding through parts of Shen Yun in recent weeks. Most dams serve commercial purposes, power generation or aquaculture that reward keeping water levels high. Releasing water early for safety means lost revenue. The system therefore contains a built-in incentive to delay action and shift the risk onto ordinary people living downstream. When the next heavy rain comes, the same calculation will be made again at thousands of other sites that have received the same kind of cosmetic upgrades and the same lack of real accountability. China's $1.5 billion offshore solar farm built to survive. Category 4 typhoons collapsed in one night. This month, powerful typhoons slammed into Shandong's coast and tore through the large marine solar project in the Wenchang area. Videos from the site showed overturned and shattered panels scattered across the water, flooding inside nearby industrial buildings and power equipment on poles smoking after being swamped. The project, with a total investment of 11 billion yuan, was promoted as a model, combining solar power modern fish farming and energy storage across more than 3,000 hectares. By morning, it was largely destroyed. The damage went far beyond what officials expected from a facility designed for 25 years of operation and built to handle typhoon-force winds up to level 17. A worker in the sector, Mr. Yang, said the storm's wind gusts and wave impact exceeded the theoretical safety limits. He noted that even if the financial hit from the early phase panels could be absorbed, the destruction would slow or halt later construction stages and scare off further investment. The failure followed the familiar pattern of rushed, low-quality work that looks impressive on paper but cannot stand up to real conditions. Public reaction online was blunt. Some pointed out that the coast was never a good place for this kind of installation, and that the money would have been better spent in stable desert regions. Others called it another political achievement project meant to generate headlines and subsidies rather than reliable power. The subsidies ultimately come from ordinary taxpayers, yet the regime continues to celebrate scale while ignoring obvious risks from typhoons and corrosion. One commenter asked whether anyone had seriously considered what would happen if the structures actually faced a major storm before construction began. The project was developed by a Shandong renewable energy firm under a 2023 agreement with local authorities. It was supposed to reach roughly 2 million kilowatts through phased construction running to 2030. Marine solar farms in China typically use fixed reinforced concrete piles driven into the seabed in shallower waters with panels mounted on top. This design was presented as more stable than experimental floating systems, yet the same waters have already produced one clear warning sign. In 2023, a government-backed floating wind and solar test project in southern Shandong waters lost nearly all its panels and covers within months of operation. Only the empty floating structure remained. Industry experts attributed the loss to waves overwhelming the platform-weak connections and panels that could not withstand prolonged marine stress. The state investor never issued a public explanation. China's broader solar sector is now paying for years of the same approach. Government subsidies and political targets drove production capacity above 1,000 gigawatts, while global new installations in 2025 reached only about 600 gigawatts. The resulting price war has pushed many products below cost. Major listed companies including Jinko Solar, Trina Solar, and Longai Green Energy are expected to post heavy losses in 2025 with sector-wide red ink surpassing 60 billion yuan. Projects across the supply chain have been postponed or abandoned. Overcapacity has also damaged quality as firms chased volume rather than durability. Export markets have turned hostile for the same reason. The United States and Europe have imposed tariffs to counter subsidized Chinese panels. Companies responded by shifting production to Southeast Asia. But new U.S. tariffs on those countries have forced closures in Vietnam, Thailand, and Malaysia. Supporting factories supplying glass frames and components laid off workers and left industrial zones half-built. Local governments that once welcomed the investment now face abandoned sites and sudden unemployment. Even the recent spike in oil prices from the Iran conflict has not changed the cautious mood inside Chinese solar firms. They know the fundamental imbalance between supply and demand remains unsolved and that further political or trade shocks are likely. The regime keeps expanding production and announcing new marine or desert projects. But each new failure at sea or mounting quarterly loss shows the same gap between announced goals and actual engineering or market reality. China's biggest fiscal crisis losing hope in the future. 58 million abandoned social security businesses choose jail over payments. A small business owner in Guangdong recently told tax officials he would rather close his company than force his employees to pay social security contributions he could no longer afford. He handed over all his accounting records and said if they wanted to destroy his livelihood, so be it. Even his workers did not want the deductions. On a monthly salary of 4,000 to 5,000 yuan, each person in Guangdong must contribute about 1,950 yuan towards social security. Many would rather buy cheap private medical insurance for a few hundred yuan instead. This scene is playing out across China. In the first quarter of 2026 alone 58 million people stopped paying into the social security system. More than 60% of them were between 20 and 35 years old. At social security offices, young people and small merchants are lining up to withdraw. One man explained that he and his wife now pay over 20,000 yuan a year. By age 65, they would have contributed around 560,000 yuan for a pension of roughly 2,000 yuan a month that might not even start until they are 60. With work stress causing rising rates of heart disease, diabetes, and sudden deaths in their age group, he decided he probably would not live long enough to break even. Most people in the comments agreed better to keep the money now than chase a pension they may never collect. The pressure comes from a national tax system that has grown far more aggressive. The Golden Tax Phase 4 platform now cross-checks bank records, invoices, business registrations, and social security data in real time. In the first quarter, it automatically collected 41.6 billion yuan in back taxes and fines, more than three times the total for all of last year. Three widely shared cases have spooked owners. A building materials dealer who routed 3 million yuan through personal accounts without issuing invoices was hit with nearly 8 million yuan in taxes, late fees, and penalties. A factory owner who borrowed 5 million yuan from his company and left it unrepaid for three years was forced to pay 1.18 million yuan in personal income tax. A third owner who used restaurant and fuel receipts to extract 2 million yuan now faces a criminal investigation for suspected embezzlement and fake invoices. Small and medium sized companies say they have no room left. They compete against state-backed firms that receive cheap credit and political protection while operating on razor-thin margins themselves. Many already pay bribes just to keep operating. When the system demands full social security payments for every employee plus back taxes, owners face a choice between bankruptcy or risking jail. Some are choosing to shut down. Official unemployment figures continue to paint a milder picture. The urban youth rate was reported at 15.6 percent, but many young people have simply been reclassified as low-income rather than unemployed. The real number of people in precarious gig work delivery drivers, ride-hail operators, streamers runs into the hundreds of millions and most pay their own social security with little leftover after rent and daily costs. In the latest national employment plan, authorities for the first time since the 1990s declined to set a specific target for new jobs, saying only that they would maintain a reasonable level. Experts called it an admission that they no longer trust their own data, especially after pandemic deaths. Distorted population figures and artificial intelligence is reshaping the labor market faster than anyone can measure. At the same time, the government is pushing an ambitious target to reach 60 trillion yuan in consumer goods sales by 2030. Business owners who lived through the earlier boom say the target is detached from reality. One entrepreneur who built a successful education chain with hundreds of stores across eastern China watched his Shanghai operations shrink from more than 10 locations to just two. Dinner with friends that once cost tens of thousands of yuan now stays around 10,000. He described police-style threats that he would rot in prison and eventually left for Canada. Dozens of his business acquaintances have faced bankruptcy detention or worse in recent years. Household consumption has stayed stuck around 37 to 38 percent of GDP for years, far below levels in developed economies. Much of the earlier spending came from rising property values rather than wage growth. As home prices fall, that wealth effect has reversed and families are pulling back. The same authorities who set unrealistic consumption goals are using big data tax tools to extract more from people and companies that already have nothing left to give. The gap between the targets on paper and the choices ordinary people are making on the ground keeps widening. Trump releases declassified documents exposing China's 2020 election interference and intelligence cover-up. On July 16, President Trump released newly declassified documents detailing foreign interference in the 2020 U.S. election, with a heavy focus on actions by the Chinese Communist Party. The materials were posted on a new White House election integrity webpage and include reports from the CIA, FBI, and National Intelligence Council. They describe systematic efforts by Beijing to collect massive amounts of American voter data target senior U.S. officials and influence public opinion while avoiding the most aggressive tactics that might trigger a strong backlash. Intelligence reports show the CCP collected data on more than 204 million Americans, much of it pulled from publicly available sources and through the compromise of U.S. private sector entities. Cyber actors linked to Beijing targeted personal email accounts of senior officials across the Executive Office of the President, Congress, and the Federal Judiciary. One National Intelligence Council assessment noted that Beijing expanded its collection efforts to gather information on political candidates, campaigns, donors, and voters. A firsthand FBI report based on an informant stated that the CCP forged tens of thousands of U.S. driver's licenses and sent them to the United States so that Chinese students and immigrants sympathetic to the party could vote for Joe Biden. The documents also detail influence operations aimed at stoking racial and socioeconomic divisions. A National Intelligence Council report assessed that Beijing viewed racial conflict as a major factor in the election and that employees of Chinese technology companies affiliated with the government helped carry out operations to covertly incite violence and protests against the U.S. government. These efforts appeared on platforms, including TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. While not always directly traceable to the CCP, analysts concluded that elements of the Chinese government were at least aware of the campaigns and may have directed them. Perhaps most damaging are the revelations about how U.S. intelligence agencies handled this information. Internal emails show officials deliberately modified the president's daily brief by removing details about China's election-related activities. One unnamed intelligence official wrote that the community had avoided mentioning connections to the election for irrelevant reasons. Dozens of CIA and NSA reports on Beijing's targeting of the election were reportedly kept out of briefings to the president. In response, Trump ordered the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Justice Department, the FBI, and the CIA to investigate why critical information was withheld. He directed that those involved in the suppression be fired and that criminal charges be pursued where appropriate. The documents make clear that while China stopped short of its most aggressive interference methods in hopes of stabilizing relations after the election, it still pursued data collection, influence operations, and efforts to exploit divisions inside the United States. The additional layer of U.S. intelligence officials actively downplaying or removing China-related findings raises serious questions about whether political considerations shaped what the president and the public were allowed to know. We value your perspective. Let us know your thoughts in the comments. If you found this report meaningful, please share it with others. Your support helps us continue delivering independent, fact-based analysis on global affairs. Subscribe and like to stay informed with RedWall. Thank you for watching.