Floods still a danger on the Yangtze
- Source: Global Times
- [01:12 July 20 2010]
- Comments
China has the power to stage the greatest Olympics and World Expo as well as building the world's largest network of high-speed railways boasting ground speeds of up to 350 kilometers an hour.
But when it comes to the annual floods along the Yangtze River and the havoc they wreak on the richest parts of the country, there isn't much people can do.
The economic losses caused by floods this year almost equal the total investment in the gigantic Three Gorges Dam. The government should reconsider their water-taming strategies when they draft major economic plans, so as to prevent financial gains from being eaten away by relentless floods.
The 6,300-kilometer Yangtze and its branches support more than one-third of the country's total population, and almost half of its agricultural output. Big cities such as Chongqing, Wuhan, Nanjing and Shanghai are just part of the shining pearls near the waterway.
However, floods have dealt huge blows to the economy and to people's livelihoods in the Yangtze regions.
This year's floods have left hundres of people dead in China, inundated more than 6 million hectares of farm land and caused at least 120 billion yuan ($17.6 billion) in direct financial losses. The lost money is comparable to the 185 billion yuan ($27.2 billion) invested in the Three Gorges project that is designed to tame the river and generate electricity for the country's booming economy.
The government has been increasing its investment in flood control projects since the devastating floods of 1998, when more than 4,000 people were killed. But the efforts are not enough considering the scale and difficulty of such a complex project.
The world's largest dam will not cure all problems. Just like it showed this year after the 16-year project was finished and put into full operation, floods remain a threat in many places.
Beside building dams and raising the dikes on riverbanks, the government should spend more on preserving forest along the river.
Rainwater washes more than 500 million tons of sand into the river each year, continuously raising the riverbed, forcing the local authorities to build even higher dikes, and making the stakes higher if a dike breaks.
Fighting floods is a comprehensive engineering project. Experiences in Europe indicated that only when countries or regions along a river work together can they achieve their goals.
Just as China's economic success would not have happened without the joint efforts of all provinces from north to south, harnessing the raging river will not succeed if cities and villages from west to east do not work as a whole.
The tragedies in the past few years may be a result of disconnected treating efforts, or some shortsighted local development projects that catered to local interests only and ignored the im-pact on the entire water body.
Let's start working as one on our mother river.
