Yangtze shrinks as China's Drought Disrupts Industry

AP ^ | 8/19/22 | MARK SCHIEFELBEIN

[EBH]

CHONGQING, China (AP) — Ships crept down the middle of the Yangtze on Friday after China’s driest summer in six decades left one of the mightiest rivers barely half its normal width and set off a scramble to contain the damage to a weak economy in a politically sensitive year.

Factories in Sichuan province and the adjacent metropolis of Chongqing in the southwest were ordered to shut down after reservoirs that supply hydropower fell to half their normal levels and demand for air conditioning surged in scorching temperatures.

River ferries in Chongqing that usually are packed with sightseers were empty and tied to piers beside mudflats that stretched as much as 50 meters (50 yards) from the normal shoreline to the depleted river’s edge. Smaller ships sailed down the middle of the Yangtze, one of China’s biggest trade channels, but no large cargo ships could be seen.

Normally bustling streets were empty after temperatures hit 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit) in Chongqing on Thursday. State media said that was the hottest in China outside the desert region of Xinjiang in the northwest since official records began in 1961.

“We cannot live through this summer without air conditioning,” said Chen Haofeng, 22, who was taking pictures of the exposed riverbed. “Nothing can cool us down.”

The disruption adds to challenges for the ruling Communist Party, which is trying to shore up sagging economic growth before a meeting in October or November when President Xi Jinping is expected to try to award himself a third five-year term as leader.

[EBH]

Photos reveal how bad it is. Another supply chain disruption coming if they do not get rain soon.

[Cowgirl of Justice]

Why aren’t they doing solar and wind?

Aren’t the solar panels made in China?

[Hot Tabasco]

I thought China had catastrophic flooding not too long ago?

[ToxicMasculinity]

They can get a better price from stupid, gullible Americans. Chinese know how to make a fan out of paper and thin sticks. Let ‘em eat rice cakes.

[Sirius Lee]

I thought China had catastrophic flooding not too long ago?

It's like the weather changes every year, from warmer years to colder, to warmer, to colder again. Same for rainy, dry, snowy, back to dry, rainy....

Climate change is real, and the solar cycles, and the occasional big volcano, have everything to do with it.

[mewzilla]

Photos...

Whose photos?

Trust but verify.

[EEGator]

It’s a big country. Like how CA has water issues, but Kentucky just flooded.

[alloysteel]

The flooding is not in the right place. It is raining in Arizona too, but still the Colorado River and Lake Mead are lower than they have been in years.

Same kind of thing is happening in Germany, where the Rhine River is so low that the heavy boat traffic on that waterway is sharply reduced, requiring the use of rail to transport goods.

Electricity is not the only thing in Germany threatened, by any means.

Perhaps God is sending a smite of Biblical proportions?

[Sertorius]

How many bodies did China find in the river bed?

[HYPOCRACY]

Right. It’s a huge country with a massive desert on its west and a flood plain in the east.

Their concrete sucks and their engineering is even worse.

[TexasGunLover]

They manufacture almost everything the United States uses on a daily basis from industrial and medical to consumer and business. You better hope they eat well.

[LouAvul]

Perhaps God is sending a smite of Biblical proportions?

Re the current drought, it happens and, has happened, throughout history. The worst for us was the Dust Bowl in the 1930s.

Whenever God "smites" in the Bible, it's such that man didn't have to ask, "is this from God?"

2 Peter 3:10-12: But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness, Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat?

Again, man will not have to ask, "Is this from God?" Man will know: Rom 14:11: As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.

[IrishBrigade]

‘Perhaps God is sending a smite of Biblical proportions?’

I hardly think such things as rainfall or lack of same has anything to do with the hurt feelings of any supernatural entities...

[lilypad]

Oh dear where will they dump their garbage.

[bert]

They already got the rain in July of 2020 and July of 2021

[ToxicMasculinity]

If they should happen to gorge themselves on Xi Jinpig’s fat, I won’t shed a tear.

[texas booster]

The exposed riverbed of Jialing River in Chongqing around 4 p.m. Tuesday. Photo: VCG

China’s Yangtze river basin faces low water levels in what is normally flood season, with exposed riverbeds showing cracks and connected freshwater lakes shrinking, amid a sustained heatwave.

Around 783,000 people in six province-level regions belonging to the Yangtze River basin, an area traditionally on flood alert from June to August, have been affected by drought this year and needed government support, according to state broadcaster CCTV.

Interesting how hard it was too find a photo not covered by AP or Reuters copyright.

Please note that August is normally China's flood season on the Yangtze.

[texas booster]

Regions that rely on the Yangtze, China's longest river, are having to deploy pumps and cloud-seeding rockets as a long drought depletes water levels and threatens crops, and a heatwave is set to last another two weeks.

In the sprawling southwestern municipality of Chongqing, facing its second hottest summer since records began in 1961, 900 missiles have been made available to try to "seed" clouds and induce rain, media reported.

Other regions have launched their own weather modification operations.

China normally releases water from the Three Gorges reservoir to relieve drought on the Yangtze but downstream outflows are half the level of a year earlier, official data showed.

[moovova]

Incredible pictures.