[Big read] The deadly climate blind spots fracturing China’s illusion of control

(Edited and refined by Grace Chong, with the assistance of AI translation.)

“The three major disasters — the floods in Guangxi, the landslide in Chongqing and the mudslide in Tibet — occurred one after another in less than two months. It would be hard to believe this was merely a coincidence.”

Liang Emlyn Yang, a professor in the Department of Geography at Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich who has long studied climate change, made the above assessment in an interview with Lianhe Zaobao (LHZB) following the catastrophic flash floods and mudslides along the border of Nepal and China’s Tibet.

On 26 August, a glacier collapse along the China-Nepal border triggered a massive, tsunami-like mudslide. According to Nepal’s National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority, more than 1,000 people have been confirmed dead in Nepal, with about 6,000 still missing. Chinese official figures put the death toll on the Chinese side at 43, with another 519 people unaccounted for.

Since July, China has experienced several major disasters involving heavy loss of life that prompted directives from the country’s top leader. The Tibet mudslide is the latest — and the deadliest — of these incidents.

Earlier, Typhoon Maysak brought exceptionally heavy rainfall to Guangxi in early July, triggering a series of disasters, including reservoir breaches and flooding. At least 159 people were killed and ten remain missing. On 17 July, a massive landslide struck Pengshui Miao and Tujia autonomous county in Chongqing, killing at least 51 people and leaving ten missing. Landslides and flash floods also hit two parts of Gansu province in July, killing 21 and 25 people respectively.

Extreme weather is becoming more frequent

Yang said that, under the continued influence of climate change, “looking at the broader trend, there is a strong likelihood that extreme weather disasters will occur frequently in the period ahead”.

Chen Zhenlin, head of the China Meteorological Administration, made a similar point in an article published in mid-August in Qiushi, an official publication of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). He said China is among the regions of the world that are highly sensitive to climate change and significantly affected by it, and that the risk of extreme weather disasters is rising.

As examples, Chen noted that in July 2023, eastern parts of northern China went from prolonged drought to historically rare heavy rainfall within a short period, resulting in the most severe basin-wide flooding in the Hai River basin since 1963. This June, the Hotan region of Xinjiang received a year’s worth of rainfall in just three hours. Direct economic losses from meteorological disasters in China have also risen from an annual average of more than 240 billion RMB (US$35.8 billion) at the beginning of this century to more than 330 billion RMB in recent years.

The same issue of Qiushi published the full text of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s speech at a CCP Politburo group study session in late April. Xi said that as the global climate continues to warm, extreme weather and disasters such as rainstorms, floods, typhoons and droughts have increased significantly in both frequency and severity, while their geographical and seasonal patterns have also changed. New types of disasters, such as glacial lake outburst floods, are also becoming increasingly common. “China’s disaster prevention, mitigation and relief work currently faces many new situations and challenges,” he said.

China is, of course, not the only country facing new challenges from climate change. Europe has endured prolonged heat and drought this summer, triggering wildfires across many areas, severely damaging crops and driving up heat-related deaths. Public health agencies in Germany and Spain estimate that about 15,800 and more than 5,000 people respectively died as a result of high temperatures this summer, with both figures reaching their highest levels in about a decade.

Agence France-Presse, citing data from the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, reported that about 33 countries, stretching from Western Europe to Africa and Central America, recorded their hottest July since records began.

A report released by the United Nations Environment Programme in early September, titled “Limiting overshoot: Navigating exceedance of 1.5°C and pathways towards return”, said global temperatures could exceed the 1.5°C threshold in the coming years, pushing climate risks and impacts to dangerous new levels. Under the Paris Agreement adopted in 2015, countries committed to limiting the rise in global temperatures to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

The report warned that once warming exceeds 1.5°C, the impacts of climate change and the risk of triggering tipping points will increase with every additional 0.1°C of warming. Expected consequences include more severe extreme weather, ecosystem loss and a greater risk of inundation for small island developing states and low-lying coastal cities. Human health, food security, water supplies, nature, cities, infrastructure and economies are also expected to suffer severe consequences.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the scorching heat, raging wildfires and deadly floods experienced this summer were a warning of what lies ahead.

The World Meteorological Organization also announced on 3 September that El Nino was firmly established and would intensify into a very strong event in the coming months, significantly affecting global rainfall and temperature patterns and raising the risk of extreme weather going into 2027.

Wang Jingyu, an assistant professor in the Humanities and Social Studies Education Academic Group at the National Institute of Education (NIE), Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore, and a researcher specialising in climate change, said on LHZB podcast Global Heartbeat (《东谈西论》) in early September: “The collapses, landslides and mudslides that have occurred recently might previously have been considered once-in-a-century events. But in the not-too-distant future, if the trend of global warming is not effectively halted, these events could become larger in scale. What used to be a once-in-a-century event, for example, could become a once-in-a-decade event, or even occur every year.”

Richard Betts, head of climate impacts research at the UK Met Office and a professor at the University of Exeter who contributed to the “Limiting overshoot” report, also cited the mudslide along the Nepal-China border as an example, stressing that such events could become increasingly frequent.

Betts wrote on LinkedIn: “As ever, the more vulnerable people and nations are most at risk, despite having contributed least to the problem.”

The challenge of cross-border disaster warnings

Nepal’s Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal described the unprecedented floods as a “Himalayan Tsunami” at a diplomatic briefing on 3 September, saying the disaster was another reminder of the increasingly severe consequences of global warming.

“Nepal contributes a negligible share of global emissions, yet our people bear a disproportionate burden of the impacts of a warming Himalayas,” he said.

The lesson from the deadly floods, Khanal said, was clear: “Climate justice, effective early-warning systems, disaster preparedness and resilient reconstruction must move from commitments on paper to concrete action on the ground.”

His remarks came amid intense debate over cross-border disaster early warnings.

According to Reuters, officials from Nepal and China held talks in Kathmandu in May on strengthening cooperation in monitoring and responding to floods, weather and glacier-related hazards. But two Nepali officials said the glacier-risk and water-level information they received from China after the meeting fell short of expectations. They feared that insufficient data sharing could hamper Nepal’s ability to anticipate and prepare for major disasters.

Yang said the sensitivity of sovereignty and data, asymmetric monitoring capabilities and the cross-border nature of disasters were among the main hurdles to such cooperation.

“The lack of smooth cross-border cooperation is indeed a prominent problem,” he said. “Addressing it requires not only investment in technology, but also for the two sides to establish a regularised framework for information sharing and joint early warnings at the institutional level. This disaster may serve as a catalyst for that.”

A Politburo meeting chaired by Xi on 28 August called for stronger international cooperation on disaster management in border areas, with the aim of jointly improving emergency management as well as disaster prevention, mitigation and relief.

China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency reported on 8 September that Chinese meteorological, water resources and other authorities had quickly established contact with Nepal following the disaster, sharing monitoring data and conducting joint consultations.

The report quoted a senior meteorologist at Nepal’s Department of Hydrology and Meteorology as saying that Nepal hoped to further share meteorological observation, satellite and radar data with China and strengthen cooperation in areas such as early-warning systems, in order to improve the monitoring, forecasting and early warning of severe weather.

Wang said that with existing mainstream technologies, it would have been difficult to detect the risk of the August floods along the Nepal-China border in advance. The fundamental problem, he said, was the location of the disaster’s source.

“Conventional monitoring methods simply cannot cover this uninhabited area because it is at such a high altitude. The area is inherently unsuitable for human habitation, yet it is precisely where the disaster originated.”

Austin Lord, an environmental anthropologist who provides disaster and climate-risk management support to Nepal’s government, wrote in an analysis published by the US think tank Stimson Center that the source of the disaster lay in a genuine blind spot. Neither Chinese nor Nepali authorities, nor the international scientific community, had previously identified the site as an emerging risk.

“No one held back any information,” the article said. “The speed and intensity of this event were overwhelming for all.”

Even so, Lord stressed the need for a comprehensive improvement in systems and coordination. “Perhaps this event will catalyse new and more effective forms of transboundary cooperation and action,” he said.

Yang said cross-border cooperation must go beyond early-warning systems and move towards building joint resilience. This could include joint emergency-response exercises, jointly developed disaster-risk zoning and disaster-prevention standards, and exploring the creation of a cross-border disaster-risk fund.

“True disaster resilience cannot rely solely on defensive infrastructure within a single country,” he said. “Instead, it requires building a shared awareness of risk and a common commitment to action at the river-basin level.”

Yang also noted that while natural factors such as climate change determine whether a disaster occurs, human factors — including the location of engineering projects, land-use practices and disaster-prevention standards for infrastructure — largely determine “how many people will be killed or injured”.

This means there are systematic ways to reduce risk and strengthen resilience.

“All of this requires time, investment and political will, and cannot be achieved overnight,” Yang said. “But every major disaster is a stress test. The weaknesses it exposes are precisely where resilience-building efforts should be focused. If we can turn the pain of a disaster into sustained investment before the next one strikes, casualties from disasters can, in the long run, be significantly reduced.”

A new pattern in disaster disclosure

Beijing was hit by torrential rain last July. In the final paragraph of an official statement on the top leader’s instructions on flood prevention and disaster relief, authorities disclosed for the first time that “the torrential rain and flooding in Beijing’s Miyun district caused significant casualties”.

The disclosure shocked a member of a central-level state media organisation, who said, “This way of disclosing the information was so unexpected.”

The statement broke with China’s established practice of information disclosure following major disasters. In the past, after accidents involving significant loss of life, statements from the top leadership would typically come only after local authorities had announced specific figures for deaths, injuries and missing people.

Now, however, it has become the new normal for a statement on top-level instructions to be the first official disclosure that an incident has caused major casualties.

Since July this year, there have been four incidents in which top-level instructions were the first official disclosure of significant casualties: the Tibet mudslide in August; the Chongqing landslide and a shoe factory fire in Jinjiang, Fujian, in July; and a cargo ship fire at a shipyard in Qingdao on 10 September.

According to official statements, the four incidents caused at least 43 deaths and 519 people missing; 51 deaths and ten people missing; 28 deaths; and 25 deaths respectively.

In all four cases, local authorities released figures for deaths, injuries and missing people only after the top leadership’s instructions had been issued in Beijing.

Moreover, since the beginning of this year, a number of official statements on major incidents involving significant casualties have stopped mentioning specific figures for deaths, injuries and missing people, even though such figures were routinely included in the past.

At a Politburo group study session in late April focused on “improving the capacity for disaster prevention, mitigation and relief”, China’s top leadership said: “We must do a good job in guiding public opinion and release relevant information in a timely and accurate manner.”

Wang Shengyu, a research assistant with the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis, told LHZB that the emphasis on “releasing relevant information in a timely and accurate manner” was fundamentally about “accuracy”.

“While controlling public information matters, a more critical political challenge is getting veteran officials to report local realities accurately, preventing the central government from falling into an echo chamber.”

The problem of information flowing upwards

In May, Qinyuan county, in the coal-rich province of Shanxi, suffered China’s worst mining disaster in 17 years, leaving at least 82 dead. Local authorities were subsequently accused by public opinion of falsifying or concealing information about the disaster, and several officials later fell from power one after another.

Wang said the Qinyuan incident sent shockwaves through Shanxi’s officialdom, reflecting Beijing’s heightened vigilance over whether information flows within local governments were functioning effectively.

“What is particularly alarming to the top leadership is the fact that major problems are downplayed and minor ones are brushed aside, leaving the central government in a passive position,” he said.

Meanwhile, the disclosure of deaths and missing people following the catastrophic mudslide along the Nepal-China border in August stood in stark contrast between the two countries.

While Nepal published lists of missing people and identifying information about victims on its government website, Chinese authorities only provided an aggregate figure for those killed and missing.

That disparity has fuelled speculation among the Chinese public that challenge official figures.

Following the Tibet mudslide and the July floods in Guangxi, which killed more than 100 people, members of the public posted comments online such as “including those on the Nepal side, the death toll is probably in the thousands” and “I heard that around 10,000 people died in this flood”. They were subsequently punished by the authorities.

After torrential rain in Beijing in 2012 killed at least 79 people, authorities published the names of all the victims. The People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the CCP Central Committee, described the move at the time as “an extremely valuable step forward” and called for “the publication of victims’ names to become the government’s responsibility and obligation”.

Yet in recent years, it has become standard practice in China’s major disasters involving significant loss of life for authorities to disclose only an aggregate figure for the dead, injured and missing, while withholding victims’ names on privacy grounds.

Following this year’s mudslide in Tibet and landslide in Chongqing, authorities made a rare move to identify a small number of victims — civil servants who warned the public to evacuate, even until their final moments. The authorities selectively published their names, holding them up as heroic models for propaganda.

Meanwhile, Reuters reported that relatives of foreign nationals missing in Tibet said “there is no information on the China side”, worsening their agony.

In response to external criticism, the Chinese government invited and organised several foreign media organisations to enter the heart of the Tibet mudslide disaster zone for the first time earlier this month.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun had also said previously: “China has been open, transparent and timely in information release. Smear and disinformation is most unwelcome at a time of disaster response.”

This article was first published in Lianhe Zaobao as “天灾频现 考验中国防灾答卷”.

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