BEIJING (CHINA DAILY/ASIA NEWS NETWORK) - President Xi Jinping has called for a more effective flood response and an all-out effort to protect human lives and assets from the disaster as China raised its national emergency response for flood control to level II, the second-highest in the country's four-tier response system.
In an advisory released on Sunday (July 12), Mr Xi warned that the flood control situation is grim and said that severe flooding in the Chongqing municipality and Jiangxi, Anhui, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces has caused casualties and loss of assets.
He ordered party committees and governments of all levels to shoulder their responsibilities and take extra steps to monitor the floods and relocate people in flood-hit areas.
He also told relevant authorities to enhance coordination amongst themselves and asked the People's Liberation Army and the People's Armed Police to play a more active role in flood relief.
At the same time, he added, rebuilding works and the resumption of production activities should begin in earnest to prevent victims in flood-prone areas from slipping back into poverty.
In the province of Jiangxi, the authorities activated its highest level emergency response last Saturday after the water level of Poyang Lake, China's largest freshwater lake, exceeded its previous record high, set in 1998.
Early on Sunday morning, the water level at Poyang Lake's Xingzi hydrological station had risen to 22.53m, 1cm higher than the record in 1998, according to the province's water resources department.
Nearby, the water level of the Jiujiang section of the Yangtze River rose to 3m above the danger level on Sunday and was still rising, local authorities said.
Faced with the dire situation, the government in Jiujiang decided on Sunday to evacuate residents from its Jiangzhou Island.
All people younger than 18 or older than 65 will be evacuated before Monday.
People aged between 18 and 65, apart from those who are sick or disabled, have to stay to help fight the flood.
From July 6 to Sunday, floods had affected about 5.5 million people in Jiangxi, with 475,000 people being evacuated from flood-prone areas.
Over 510,000ha of crops were damaged and the province alone had suffered direct economic losses of 8.13 billion yuan (S$1.61 billion).
Other provinces in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River have also lifted their response level.
The Jiangsu province activated its second-highest response level for the Jiangsu section of the Yangtze and Taihu Lake region from 4pm on Sunday after the water level there remained above its warning level for 15 days as it continued to rise.
It reached 4.45m at 8am on Sunday, 1mm higher than it was 24 hours before and 65cm above its danger level.
A total of 433 rivers in China have exceeded alerting levels since early June, with 33 of them rising to historical highs, said the Ministry of Water Resources on Monday.
Floods have affected 37.89 million people in 27 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities. 141 people are dead or missing, and 28,000 houses have collapsed.
A forecast from the National Meteorological Centre said the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze will continue to be lashed by rainfall before Thursday.
After that, precipitation in the region is expected to weaken.
