Can China’s cities keep pace with climate change?

(Edited and refined by Josephine Hong, with the assistance of AI translation.)

A friend recently asked me out for tea, but messaged me the day before to say it was simply too hot. Worried about heatstroke, she suggested we meet another day. I immediately agreed and replied, “It’s so hot, I feel like returning to Singapore to escape the heat.”

She burst out laughing, thinking I was joking. To her, this was merely a typical summer in this city long known as a “furnace”.

Increasing number of ‘furnace cities’

Accustomed to sweltering summers, Chongqing residents have developed their own ways of beating the heat. Some turn the city’s air-raid shelters into natural refuges from the heat, spreading out mats, waving palm-leaf fans and lounging contentedly. Others settle into designated cooling areas at Chongqing metro stations early in the morning to enjoy the free air-conditioning.

My friend told me that her elderly relatives would be taking the children to the cooler climate of Yunnan for a month-long holiday the following week. Her mother, meanwhile, bought a 60-square-metre apartment in Guizhou about seven years ago as a summer retreat.

“This is nothing compared to 2022,” she nonchalantly reassured me.

Chongqing endured a rare spell of extreme heat and drought in the summer of 2022. Its duration, intensity and geographical extent all set historical records, while the prolonged drought also sparked wildfires, leaving the city grappling with the dual threats of searing temperatures and raging blazes.

Chongqing, Wuhan and Nanjing were once popularly known in China as the country’s “three furnaces”. But as extreme heat has become more widespread in recent years, the “furnace” label is no longer confined to a handful of cities.

Beijing, Shanghai, Zhengzhou, Xi’an and Hangzhou have all recorded temperatures of around 40 degrees Celsius on multiple occasions in recent years, and heat alerts are gradually becoming a standard feature of summer in many cities.

Even as “furnace” is no longer enough to describe the punishing heat confronting Chinese cities, at the other extreme, torrential rain and flooding are reshaping public perceptions of severe weather. Heatwaves and downpours once described as “once-in-a-century” events are occurring with increasing frequency, in some cases becoming annual events.

In July this year alone, typhoons pushed rainfall to record levels in many parts of China. In Guangxi, prolonged heavy rain caused by typhoons triggered urban flooding. The Dongban River basin saw its worst flood in 50 years; a breach occurred at the Liulan Reservoir in Hengzhou, and hundreds of thousands of people were affected. In Huanggang, Hubei province, persistent downpours combined with severe convective weather triggered a historically rare tornado with Level 15 wind speeds.

Costly damages to infrastructure and livelihoods

China swiftly mobilised large rescue contingents after the disasters struck. Firefighters, armed police and other rescue personnel braved the rain and floodwaters, using rescue boats to search for missing people and evacuate those stranded, demonstrating the country’s formidable emergency response capabilities.

Huanggang Normal University in Hubei, meanwhile, sustained severe structural damage due to the tornado. Direct economic losses were estimated at about 153 million RMB (US$22.6 million), and the university was forced to cancel its final examinations.

Compared with southern China and the Yangtze River basin, north-eastern China has historically been less exposed to prolonged heavy rain brought by typhoons. This year proved an exception. On 13 July, several rainfall indicators in the urban districts of Shenyang, the capital of Liaoning province, reached their highest levels since comprehensive meteorological records began in 1951, upending the traditional pattern of floods in the south and drought in the north.

Photographs circulating online showed roads in central Shenyang turned into rivers and vehicles submerged. One netizen recounted with lingering fear that he realised the severity of the situation only after reaching a metro station and hearing that floodwaters had poured into other stations.

Meteorological and water resources experts generally agree that global warming is increasing both the frequency and intensity of extreme weather. Yet much of China’s infrastructure, including water conservancy projects and urban drainage systems, was built decades ago according to historical climate data and design standards. As extreme weather repeatedly exceeds those parameters, these infrastructure are being tested as never before.

In other words, climate change will undoubtedly continue to rewrite historical records, but infrastructure cannot be upgraded overnight.

New test of urban governance

Rapid urbanisation is also magnifying the impact of extreme weather. Densely concentrated populations, industries and infrastructure, extensive paved surfaces and shrinking space for rivers and lakes make short bursts of intense rain more likely to cause urban flooding. Critical systems such as transport, electricity and communications are also interconnected, meaning that the failure of one link can quickly disrupt an entire city.

China’s 14th Five-Year Plan (2021 to 2025) made the building of “resilient cities” a national development goal for the first time. At the end of 2024, the authorities went a step further, calling to build resilient cities with strong capabilities to withstand shocks, adapt to changing conditions and recover quickly from disruptions.

As extreme weather becomes increasingly frequent, a city’s competitiveness is measured not only by the height of its skyline or the speed of its trains, but also by whether it can maintain basic operations during heatwaves and torrential rain, and restore production and everyday life as quickly as possible. This is fast becoming a new yardstick of urban governance.

This article was first published in Lianhe Zaobao as “当“百年一遇”变成“年年都遇””.

Related: One size fits none: Why China’s top-down disaster response must evolve | From drought to downpour: Climate change sounds alarm bells in northeast China