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China braces for massive flooding after typhoon’s drenching

Floods in China, like this 2015 deluge, have been known to kill tens of thousands.

Floods in China, like this 2015 deluge, have been known to kill tens of thousands. Photo: Getty

Authorities in northeastern China have raised their emergency response level as tributaries of the Songhua, a major river, rose to dangerous levels after days of heavy rain caused by Typhoon Doksuri.

China’s Ministry of Water Resources said it raised the response for flooding to Level III in Inner Mongolia, Jilin and Heilongjiang. China uses a four-tier emergency response system, with Level I the most urgent.

Heilongjiang, known as China’s “great northern granary”, is among the latest areas to suffer the aftermath of Doksuri, which has killed at least 20 people and flooded Beijing and several other cities since it made landfall in the south a week ago.

China on Sunday allocated an additional 350 million yuan ($A74.1 million) to support rescues and house repairs in the flood-hit regions including Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Heilongjiang and Jilin, according to a government statement.

A million evacuees

In Hebei province nearly one million people were relocated after record rains forced authorities to channel water from swollen rivers to some populated areas for storage, sparking anger online over the homes sacrificed to save Beijing.

The vast Hai River basin covers an area the size of Poland that includes Hebei, Beijing, Tianjin. Over a span of one week from late July, the region with a population totalling 110 million experienced its most serious flooding in six decades, with Hebei, particularly Baoding prefecture, the worst hit.

According to flood control laws, when basin-wide flooding causes reservoirs, the first line of defence, to exceed their limits, water may be temporarily channelled to so-called “flood storage areas” – including low-lying populated land.

On July 31, Hebei province opened seven of its 13 designated flood storage areas, including two in the city of Zhuozhou in Baoding south of Beijing and north of Xiongan, a zone President Xi Jinping aims to develop into an economic powerhouse serving Hebei, Beijing and Tianjin.

On August 1, Hebei’s Communist Party Secretary Ni Yuefeng called Xiongan a top priority for the province’s flood prevention work, according to local state media.

On his visit to flood storage areas in Baoding, Ni added that it was necessary to reduce the pressure on Beijing’s flood control and create a “moat” for the Chinese capital.

“Beijing should foot the bill”, wrote a netizen on the popular Chinese microblog Weibo.

In other posts on Zhuozhou, netizens said residents weren’t aware they lived in a flood storage area and the rights of the minority had been sacrificed.

Record-breaking rains in Baoding led to the overflowing of 67 of its 83 small reservoirs and water in all of its 10 large reservoirs rising to dangerous levels, the Baoding government said on Saturday.

“When the flood is too large and exceeds the defence capacity of the embankment, it becomes an inevitable need for flood control to use flood storage areas,” the official China Water Resources News said in a post on Weibo on August 1.

“This is also for the sake of protecting the overall situation. You have to sacrifice one part for the sake of the bigger whole.”

As of Friday, Hebei had relocated more than 1.54 million people, including 961,200 from flood storage areas, state media reported.

Residents in flood storage areas “have given up their homes to protect everyone”, and will be compensated according to the law, said a department of the Ministry of Water Resources.

On Saturday, authorities of Bazhou city in another part of Hebei expressed “heartfelt thanks” to residents for following orders and evacuating their homes ahead of time.

A compensation review for damaged agricultural production and housing will be conducted when the flood recedes, they said.

-AAP

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