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For centuries, China’s Yangtze River was a torrent. Now, it’s a mere trickle, according to media reports, which indicate the once roaring river has dried up in the midst of a historic drought and heat wave. “The water would reach street level in previous years,” a 65-year-old resident of Wuhan, China, told Bloomberg News, which said temperatures this summer have exceeded 104 degrees Fahrenheit in some Chinese cities. “This year even the riverbed sand is exposed.” To those who rely on the river for water, energy, and employment, it’s as if Mother Nature suddenly turned the spigot on a hose...

BEIJING—Engorged with more heavy rains, China’s mighty Yangtze River is cresting again, bringing fears of further destruction, as the seasonal floods that already have left 141 people dead or missing have grown in force since last month.The heavy rains are putting renewed pressure on the massive Three Gorges Dam that straddles the river upstream of the city of Wuhan in Hubei province.The official Xinhua News Agency said the rate of flow in the reservoir behind the dam would hit a record for the year on Friday night, at 55,000 square meters (almost 600,000 square feet) per second.Rivers in the...

China's Shuanghui International has made a $4.7bn bid to takeover Smithfield Foods, the world's largest pork producer, in what would be the biggest takeover of a US company by a Chinese firm to date – if it passes regulatory hurdles. The deal is likely to run into heavy opposition in Washington, where a series of Chinese takeovers have been blocked by politicians and regulators. Shuanghui, also known as Shineway, is China's largest pork producer and is part owned by an investment firm run by Goldman Sachs. A takeover would give Smithfield entry into China, one of the biggest and fastest...

For better or worse, phrases such "the Cold War" and "the clash of civilizations" matter. In a similar way, so do maps. The right map can stimulate foresight by providing a spatial view of critical trends in world politics. Understanding the map of Europe was essential to understanding the twentieth century. Although recent technological advances and economic integration have encouraged global thinking, some places continue to count more than others. And in some of those, such as Iraq and Pakistan, two countries with inherently artificial contours, politics is still at the mercy of geography.So in what quarter of the earth...

China finally admits Its Three Gorges Dam has ‘deformed slightly’ but claims it happened over the weekend, ignoring reports this happened long ago. The Asian Times reported yesterday: In a rare revelation, Beijing has admitted that its 2.4-kilometer Three Gorges Dam spanning the Yangtze River in Hubei province “deformed slightly” after record flooding.The official Xinhua News Agency quoted the operator of the the world’s largest hydroelectric gravity dam as saying that some nonstructural, peripheral parts of the dam had buckled. The dam was a pet project of the late Premier Li Peng and a monumental pride of the nation...

In a rare revelation, Beijing has admitted that its 2.4-kilometer Three Gorges Dam spanning the Yangtze River in Hubei province “deformed slightly” after record flooding. The official Xinhua News Agency quoted the operator of the the world’s largest hydroelectric gravity dam as saying that some nonstructural, peripheral parts of the dam had buckled. The dam was a pet project of the late Premier Li Peng and a monumental pride of the nation when it blocked and diverted Asia’s largest river in 1997. The deformation occurred last Saturday when the flood from western provinces including Sichuan and Chongqing along the upper...

By Aug. 14, Yangtze River Basin’s monsoon season had lasted 64 days, the longest in the past 60 years, according to Chinese meteorological authorities. The fourth flood peak of the Yangtze River is expected to arrive at the Three Gorges Dam in the morning of Aug.15, as torrential rains have ravaged the upper reaches of the Yangtze River in Sichuan Province since Aug. 10. Many cities in the province are inundated. In the worst-hit area, water has risen to the second floor. So far, about 100,000 residents have been affected by flooding in 14 rivers across the province. CLICK ABOVE...

This week cryptocurrency enthusiasts are still focused on the severe flooding in China during the 2020 monsoon season. The flooding has already displaced millions of Chinese citizens and skeptics are concerned about the vast number of bitcoin miners located in the Sichuan province. The landlocked province in Southwest China, Sichuan is located upstream of the Three Gorges Dam. During the last two months, the 2020 monsoon season ravaged the region. Reports note that by the end of June, flooding from the rainy season has displaced 744,000 Chinese residents stemming from 26 provinces. The latest reports highlight that 54 million citizens...

Three Gorges Dam was the most dangerous in 17 years.Large floods left 101 dead and 850,000 evacuated 92 views •Jan 13, 2021 1 0 Share Save News Updates 1.17K subscribers The Three Gorges Dam encountered the biggest challenge in 17 years On January 12, it was reported that prolonged heavy rains caused floods that damaged two-thirds of China's provinces, and even put pressure on the Three Gorges dam. As of January 12, the People's Daily reported 101 people were killed or missing in the new flood, while more than 850,000 people had been evacuated due to inclement weather. This heavy...

Rain in some parts of central and southern China has hit record highs in recent weeks even though overall precipitation is about 10% lower this year compared with last year. Water levels on the Yangtze and its tributaries were expected to rise further over the next week, and it warned of major floods throughout the country from June to August. Some monitoring stations are issuing alerts, with the Wuhan city section of the Yangtze river in central China more than two meters higher than the normal at this time of the year as a result of heavy rain upstream. Last...

Floodwaters exceeded warning levels on May 22 across five major monitoring stations of the Yangtze River that runs from China’s west to east due to heavy rainfall in the past few days, according to state media Xinhua News Agency.The monitoring stations are mainly located in the middle and lower Xiang River section near Dongting Lake, Hunan Province, and in the Xin River section near Poyang Lake, Jiangxi Province.According to hydrological monitoring data released by the Changjiang Water Commission of China’s Ministry of Water Resources, as of 2 p.m. on May 22, the water levels at the monitoring stations of Qilishan...

Months of sustained downpours have battered China with floods unseen in decades, displacing millions and testing the limits of the world’s largest hydroelectric dam.Such rainfall is far from over, according to Chinese officials who, in a rare admission, said grim challenges are ahead.July and August usually bring some of the heaviest rains in China, which swell the flood-prone Yangtze River. Yet, Zhou Xuewen, the vice minister of water resources tasked with containing floods, said the rain season will continue through September, with a “very high likelihood” of severe floodings, according to a recent State Council Information Office press conference.The...

The Chinese province of Sichuan, located on the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, has activated the highest level of flood control response for the first time on record on Tuesday, August 18, 2020, as rain-induced floods continue ravaging parts of the province. Meanwhile, the Three Gorges Dam in Hubei is facing the most severe floods since it was built in 2003 and the Tropical Storm "Higos" made landfall in Guangdong. The Sichuan province is experiencing a new round of rain since August 10, prompting authorities to issue an orange rainstorm warning on two consecutive days for the first time...

Flooding as a result of heavy rainfall in Shaanxi and Sichuan provinces caused the Yangtze River to overflow in recent days, inundating cities in China’s western regions.The Yangtze’s water level in Chongqing city may exceed the safety level on Aug. 19, which means an embankment breach could happen at any time, according to state-run broadcaster CCTV, which cited officials.China’s cabinet-like State Council said at a press conference on Aug. 13 that rainfall in areas along the Yangtze and Huai rivers have reached their highest levels since 1961.A woman uses a bike to cross a flooded street after a sudden...

People in cities along China's Yangtze River, already swamped with water, are now scrambling to shore up embankments as the world's largest dam faces fast mounting flood pressure... The Three Gorges Dam spans the Yangtze, Asia's longest river, which has become a raging torrent with storm water pouring into the reservoir of the dam at 60 million litres per second on Monday night. On Tuesday morning, dam operator the China Three Gorges Group said water flow into the reservoir fluctuated between 50 million and 60 million litres per second. And the peak flow has not eased, adding more than ten...

At least 14 people were killed Saturday in southern China because of seasonal rains and flooding. Three floodgates of the Three Gorges Dam that spans the Yangtze River were opened as the water level behind the massive dam rose more than 50 feet above flood level, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported. The dam was holding back about 45 percent of the water, Xinhua said, citing China Three Gorges Corp. Upstream, 11 people had been killed in Chongqing as of Saturday morning, China National Emergency Broadcasting said in an online report, citing the municipal emergency agency. More than 20,000 people...

Damage from wide-spread flooding in China may have cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Hubei province, which was badly affected by the coronavirus outbreak, has seen some of the worst flooding around the Yangtze. The Yangtze River region saw its second-highest day of rainfall in over 50 years, authorities said Monday as deadly flooding affected much of China. Some 28,000 homes have been damaged and 141 people have died or are missing since the floods began last month. Most of mainland China is affected, including vast swathes of western areas like Tibet and Xinjiang.

It's been a disastrous start to the wet season in southern China as rounds of flooding rain and thunderstorms continue to track across the region. Multiple deaths and a massive evacuation for hundreds of thousands of people are being blamed on the persistent deluge. Heavy flooding rainfall tracked across southern China last week and over the weekend. Guizhou, Hunan and Guangxi provinces as well as Chongqing municipality were, and continue to be, some of the hardest hit provinces. The downpours turned streets into rivers and flooded buildings in parts of Chongqing on Sunday. More than 30,000 people have been affected...

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — As torrential rains in China continue to wreak havoc on more than 24 provinces, notable Chinese hydrologist Wang Weiluo (王維洛) has questioned the safety of the massive Three Gorges Dam, warning that it could collapse at any moment. In southern China, regional rainstorms and mudslides that began on June 1 have uprooted more than 7,300 houses and affected nearly eight million people as of Monday morning (June 21). The immediate economic loss is estimated at 20.6 billion RMB (US$2.9 billion) by local officials. The nonstop downpours have also raised the Chinese public's concerns over the potential...

It sounds like a familiar story: on a bright Sunday in December, nearly 70 years ago, Japanese planes blazed out of the sky to strafe and bomb an American warship while it lay at anchor. The surprise attack caught the crew off-guard, and despite valiant action, the ship was critically damaged, had to be abandoned, and soon sank. If you said December 7th, 1941, Pearl Harbor, you’d be wrong. The date was December 12, 1937, and the place was the Yangtze River in war-torn China. The vessel? The gunboat USS Panay. It was a sudden and deliberate attack that might...