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BEIJING - SURGING waters in southern China's swollen Pearl River delta threatened millions of people yesterday as the authorities raced to finish the evacuation of 110,000 people in the quake-hit south-west.
Although a huge flood crest flowed past the Makou monitoring station, close to the city of Guangzhou on Tuesday, water levels remained 0.45m above warning levels a day later, the state flood headquarters said on its website.
The headquarters said the torrent of water that roared by the station was the biggest in 50 years and had prompted emergency measures to protect millions of people in the delta, home to China's huge export industry.
Up to 176 people have died and 52 are still missing in flood-related incidents in China this year, with 51 dead or missing since June 6 in the provinces and regions of Guangxi, Guangdong, Jiangxi and Hunan, it said.
But state media did not agree on the toll, with some reports saying more than 200 people were dead or missing, from this month's bad weather, in what appeared to be tabulations made from late breaking local news reports.
One such report by Xinhua news agency in the Guangxi region said four students were killed and 12 injured when a school collapsed on Monday evening in Liubao township.
Another report yesterday said five children in Guangxi's Bobai county were swept into a river as they walked home from school, with only three bodies found so far.
Up to 3,000 schools in Guangxi have been damaged due to the flooding, Xinhua added.
Since the rainy season began late last month, large swathes of southern China have been flooded, while the north-east of the country is experiencing the complete opposite in the form of an unusual heatwave.
Harbin, the capital of Heilongjiang province, usually known as the Ice City, has reported an abnormally high temperature of 37.1 deg C - the second highest in the city's history.
But quake-hit Sichuan province, where millions of refugees are living in tents and makeshift shelters, is a different story altogether.
According to the Beijing News, the evacuation of up to 110,000 quake refugees from dangerous mountainous areas threatened by rain-induced landslides in Aba prefecture was slated to finish yesterday.
More than 1.66 million people have been evacuated in the areas hardest hit by the rain, with large tracts of farmland under water and losses totalling 14.5 billion yuan (S$3 billion).
Officials also warned that the north could fall victim to the weather, and the government has urged the strengthening of dykes and reservoirs along the Yellow River, known as the 'cradle of Chinese civilisation' and home to millions of urban dwellers and farmers.
Thousands of transport trucks have been stranded in Guangdong and Guangxi, cutting off food supplies to urban centres and fuelling price rises, reports said.
The National Development and Reform Commission, China's economic planner, issued orders yesterday to curb price gouging in the flood-hit areas. Vegetable prices in parts of Guangdong have reportedly seen daily rises of as much as 70 per cent.
Elsewhere in Asia, floods are tormenting those in India too, with the authorities using boats to ferry food and drinking water to hundreds of thousands of villagers in the country's east.
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
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