Why China’s catastrophic floods will barely dent its economy

The flooding, which started to recede in late July, inflicted the worst natural disaster in a decade on a country still recovering from the pandemic. At least 158 people have died or gone missing and 4 million have evacuated their homes. But so far, it has not dealt a knockout blow to the economy. In fact, Li Yao, a fellow at the East Asia Institute at the National University of Singapore, estimates in preliminary research that the 2020 flood will shave 0.17% from China's 2020 GDP, far less damage than in previous crises.

“It should not be hard for China to digest the overall economic loss caused by the flood," Li said.

The flood's minor dent to China's economy is no accident. In recent years, Beijing has nurtured new wetlands and built new dams to counter such threats. The trajectory of the floodwaters mirrors government priorities, with newly constructed infrastructure protecting cities and industrial centers at the expense of farmland and rural villages.

The current crisis is the result of an “unfortunate perfect storm” of climate change and human action, Turner said.

There's worry that the small dams that collapsed this season foreshadow what would be the Big One, a failure of Three Gorges.

The dam, a source of national pride, has so far weathered this year's crisis, but the cracks it showed mean Beijing may need to reconsider its strategy.

“Not even the Three Gorges Dam has been built strongly enough that we can be certain it will withstand the flooding China has seen in recent weeks,” said Shapiro. “If the dam were to break it would be a disaster of cataclysmic proportions,” she said, one that China's economy could not escape.

[There’s worry that the small dams that collapsed this season foreshadow what would be the Big One, a failure of Three Gorges.

The dam, a source of national pride, has so far weathered this year’s crisis, but the cracks it showed mean Beijing may need to reconsider its strategy.

I’m skeptical about the media narrative re this dam. The current liberal position is that dams are evil. The world’s biggest dam (it’s not, but the heavy breathing from the media implies it is without reference to other dams) is therefore doubly-damned, in the liberal demonology. It’s reminiscent of liberal carping about the death penalty. They’re not against a badly-built dam (and we don’t actually know that this dam has quality problems - a dam this big was bound to have teething issues) - they’re against dams, period.

We’ll see how this plays out, but I suspect that the dam is more solid than the liberal media’s portrayal would have anyone think. The Yangtze River is well-known for repeated inundations killing large numbers of people long before this dam was built. An example from almost a century ago, as well as a blurb on its tendency to overfill its banks at unpredictable intervals:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1931_China_floods
[The 1931 China floods, or the 1931 Yangtze–Huai River floods, were a series of floods that occurred from June to August 1931 in the Republic of China, hitting major cities Wuhan, Nanjing and beyond, eventually culminated into a dyke breach along Lake Gaoyou on 26 August.

Fatality estimates vary wildly. A field survey by University of Nanking led by John Lossing Buck immediately after the flood found “150,000 people had drowned, and that this number represented less than a quarter of all fatalities during the first 100 days of the flood.”[2] The official report found 140,000 drowned[3] and claims that “2 million people died during the flood, having drowned or died from lack of food”.[4] A cholera epidemic in the subsequent year, from May 1932, was officially reported to have 31,974 deaths and 100,666 cases.[5] A popular high-end estimate of 3.7 to 4.0 million fatalities “enjoys great currency online, helping the 1931 flood to secure its position on sensationalist lists of the world’s deadliest disasters.”[1]]

https://www.britannica.com/science/Yangtze-River-floods
[Yangtze River floods, floods of the Yangtze River (Chang Jiang) in central and eastern China that have occurred periodically and often have caused considerable destruction of property and loss of life. Among the most recent major flood events are those of 1870, 1931, 1954, 1998, and 2010.

The Yangtze River, the longest river in Asia, also is one of the world’s major waterways. It originates at an elevation above 16,400 feet (5,000 metres) in the Plateau of Tibet and proceeds generally eastward along a winding course until it empties into its major delta system on the East China Sea. The primary flood region is the lower course, downstream of the Three Gorges Dam, an area in which the river flows through low-lying terrain dotted by lakes, marshes, and meandering streams. Increases in the region’s population led to efforts to control the river. The Great Jinjiang Levee, completed in 1548, was one of many barriers constructed, and by the late 19th century the Yangtze could drain through only four openings on the south side of the river. Consequently, sediment was deposited only on the river bottom or in Dongting Lake, which caused the flood level to rise and created a lowland on the north bank. In addition, many of the lakes that had once acted as flood control either were cut off from the river by levees or were converted into cropland. Deforestation further reduced the capacity of the area to handle intense rains, which created more runoff.

As a result, when the lower Yangtze basin has experienced sustained heavy rains, the consequences have been catastrophic. The flood of 1931 covered more than 30,000 square miles (77,700 square km)—including the cities of Nanjing and Wuhan—killed more than 300,000 people, and left 40,000,000 more homeless. Subsequently, more-effective levees were built, but the floods of 1954 and 1998 were still highly destructive and killed some 30,000 and 3,650 people, respectively. One of the major objectives of the Three Gorges Dam project was to alleviate flooding on the lower Yangtze. The dam proved effective during the extraordinarily rainy summer of 2010 by holding back much of the resultant floodwaters and thus minimizing the impact of flooding downstream. However, the dam still had to open its floodgates to reduce the high water volume in the reservoir, and flooding and landslides in the Yangtze basin killed several hundred people and caused extensive property damage.]

The dam is big, but not some massive monstrosity beyond anything ever built, in terms of the volume of water penned in (39.3 cu km), which is comparable to the Hoover Dam (35.2 cu km):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoover_Dam
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Gorges_Dam

Canada’s Daniel Johnson Dam contains 4x the water volume of the the Three Gorges Dam.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel-Johnson_dam

Bottom line is that in the worst case, and the dam is completely destroyed, such that every drop of water behind it flushes to the surrounding area, it would inundate, to a depth of ~12 ft (~4m), 39.3/(.004)= 9825 sq km. That’s a 55 km (~34 mile) radius from the dam. Not exactly the kind of flood that got Noah’s home brew yacht project going. No fun for the people within that radius who have to seek shelter either on the roof of single story homes or above the second story of one of the many high rises that China has taken to building, but not exactly the tsunami that took out Japan’s nuclear power plant.

Capacity of dam = 39.3 cu km
Height of flood water = 4 m

Circular area covered by 4 m of flood water
= 39.3 cu km / (4 m * 1 km / 1000 m)
= 39.3 cu km / 0.004 km
= 9825 sq km.

Radius of area covered by 4 m (~12 ft) of flood water
= square root (9825 sq km / (pi = 3.14) )
= square root (3128 sq km)
= 56 km
~ 34 miles

-——The flooding, which started to recede in late July,-——

Those words indicate the gross ignorance of the writer. The flooding continues at present and the fourth Yangtze flood took place just last week. The combined rivers are over 4,000 miles long. The Yellow river was flooding just 2 or 3 days ago. To have written this article the author must have relied on CCP briefings at least a month old.

While China is a very large country, the flooding took place on the Yangtze river and numerous tributaries. Tens of millions were directly affected and as of this date, the fantastic damage to infrastructure, levees, bridges and roads is unknown. The damage to all sorts of buildings is completely unknown because the water is still there on lower floors. That excludes the fact that uncounted buildings on the river are just gone, literally swept away by the torrent.

While the rains have subsided, vast very extensive area are still covered with the flood waters. Wen levees they translate as dams, were breached, the flood waters were shunted into vast areas of flat riverbottom lands. Those lands contained growing crops.

The hydrologists have the flooding under control by breeching levees and controlint dam outflow. The prize of Shanghai has been spared apparently

If you doubt my words, go to Youtube and there are extensive daily reports going back more than a month describing the flooding is visual detail.

If you think of the damage of Katrina to stuff and to people, that was aat best a few millions. In China, the citizens affected are in the tens of millions The numbers of flooded autos might be in the millions though.

Since China was already experiencing food supply problems, the destruction of crops on the current scale is telling. Not only plants were effected. There have been lots of hog deaths as well. There have been videos of hogs swimming for their lives

coupled with the virus return and whole cities shut down, the CCP has an awful lot on it’s plate

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