December 13, 2005

This year’s rescue efforts may have been exaggerated, Richard McGregor and James Kynge report

When rivers and lakes in China began swelling after heavy rains late last week, the country’s disaster-rescue teams swung swiftly into action, reportedly mobilising about 1m workers and soldiers to fight the floods. So too did the state propaganda organs, producing bulletins about the threat to "10m people" around a lake in central Hunan and the evacuation of 600,000 people nearby. Wen Jiabao, the vice-premier tipped for a promotion in the Communist party congress in November, was pictured prominently leading the rescue effort. The response had a well-practised feel, and so it should, as flood control and the exercise of political power in China have been linked since time immemorial. The earliest emperors and heroes, such as Li Bing and his son who built a famous dam 2,000 years ago, were those who controlled the country’s mighty rivers and tamed the floods. Terrible deluges have presaged the end of many a dynasty, and the country’s current rulers maintain that the failure of the Kuomintang, their civil war opponents, to control Yangtze River floods in 1931 proved their incapacity for rule. So elemental is the connection between floods and governance that the Chinese character for "political order" is a combination of the ideogram for water and that for a dyke or platform. "China is a flood-prone country, mainly because of its monsoon climate and its uneven rainfall in time and areas," said Rui Xiaofang, of the Nanjing Hohai (River and Sea) University. This year’s floods – they are virtually an annual scourge – are the worst since 1998, when more than 4,000 people lost their lives. But, says Professor Rui, the scale of this year’s disaster is "not unusual", with just under 1,000 people reported as being killed.