The Telegraph (UK)
August 8, 1999

The lives of millions of Chinese living near the swollen Yangtze River are being endangered by corrupt officials stealing cash intended to pay for dyke reinforcements and disaster relief.

Families living along the Yangtze valley remain vulnerable to a breach in the river because only a fraction of the funds allocated for strengthening flood defences has actually been spent on the work. Some projects have been undermined by shoddy work and the use of inferior materials.

As heavy summer rains have once again brought devastation to China this year, senior leaders have given warning of the extra dangers posed by such corrupt practices, but have been unable to eradicate the problem.

More than 730 people have been killed and 5.5 million forced to leave their homes so far by this year’s floods, which have hit 23 provinces. The worst damage is along the Yangtze’s middle reaches. Last year’s seasonal deluges were even worse, leaving 4,100 people dead and causing an estimated £21 billion damage.

Water levels on the Yangtze have begun to drop from the "dangerously high" mark where they had remained for more than a month. But observers say worse could still come if tropical storms currently lashing much of east Asia move across central China.

The official media praised anti-flood measures last week. Wang Shuchung, the minister of water resources, said that £4.3 billion spent on rebuilding levees since last year’s floods had produced "remarkable benefits".

But one man on sentry duty on dykes close to the central city of Wuhan on the Yangtze said the main beneficiaries of the billions spent on flood control had been corrupt local Communist Party officials. He said: "Bridges and dykes have been reinforced by bamboo instead of steel because that’s all that could be afforded after the officials had had their fill of food and drink."

The level of corruption in the region seems to have divided the central government. While the water resources minister has appeared to gloss over the problem, the Prime Minister, Zhu Rongji, has spent much of the past month touring the area, lambasting crooked and ineffective local leaders.

Mr Zhu said to officials during a meeting in Wuhan: "Illegal subcontracting and hierarchical subcontracting by localities in their tender processes have caused draining of funds and have resulted in shoddy work using inferior materials, thereby creating hidden potential dangers."

He referred to an investigation by China Central Television, the national network. It showed that an engineering company, owned by the Hubei provincial government, had been awarded a huge contract to repair a dyke system protecting Wuhan and surrounding farmland, but had sub-contracted the work to another government firm.

In doing so, it had skimmed off 20 per cent of the contract value without carrying out any repair work. The second company did the same, but kept 35 per cent, before sub-contracting the work to a private businessman.

Mr Zhu said that officials charged with ensuring dyke safety could not hope to evade responsibility in the event of a disaster. He said: "If there is a serious accident due to poor quality of construction, the responsible person, no matter who he is and where he is transferred, must be called to account according to law."

To residents of Wuhan, the government’s promises to rehouse victims of local flooding ring hollow. Many people left destitute by last year’s disaster have been unable to rebuild their shattered lives.

A year after a 700-yard stretch of the dyke protecting the township of Paizhou, near Wuhan, crumbled under the weight of water, inundating farmland, hundreds of local people still live in half-built hovels that lack basic amenities.

In the baking summer heat, men and women lie stretched across cardboard sheets laid on concrete in two-storey houses without window panes or doors. In winter, they will be forced to hang cloth over holes as they try to keep out the cold.

Rows of half-finished houses have been built a few miles back from the riverbank. In between the new housing and the river lies a stretch of wasteland that, until last year, was at the centre of a thriving community of 50,000 people.

Locals say that only 10,000 of Paizhou’s residents have remained in the area. There are no memorials to the villagers killed when the dyke collapsed – only a score of gravestones marking the final resting places of soldiers who drowned in the rescue operation after the plain was flooded.

One Wuhan resident said local people were resigned to the river’s menace. Decades of heavy silting have raised the riverbed above the level of the surrounding countryside. Families in the area have been mobilised for generations to pile dirt against dykes as they attempt to stave off disaster.

Although the water level has started to fall back in recent days, the surface of the river stands about 10 feet above ground level. Jim Robertson, an official of the Red Cross, which launched an international appeal for funds last week to help Chinese flood victims, said: "The fear now is that, due to the length of the flood season in China, we haven’t seen the worst of it yet."