Beijing is on alert for flooding as China struggles with a series of severe weather events that are driving up food prices and threatening its economic recovery from coronavirus. The Beijing municipal government, worried over a repeat of 2012 when flash floods killed about 80 people – some of whom drowned in their cars in underpasses, has shut parks, advised residents to avoid unnecessary travel and canceled flights from its Daxing airport.
“The drainage system still needs improving,” said Liu Zitong, 36, who lives in Beijing’s traditional hutongs or alleyway districts. He described how pipes in the older courtyard homes overflowed during heavy rains. Throughout June and July, southern and central China were hit with days of incessant rain at levels similar to 1998, when flooding killed more than 3,000 people.
As of July 28, this year’s downpours had left 158 people dead or missing, displaced about 3.7m and caused Rmb144bn ($20.8bn) in damages, according to official figures, as well as destroying vast areas of crops. The floods are threatening the country’s north while a typhoon has caused landfall on the south-east coast. China’s consumer price index rose 2.7 percent in July, according to official data released on Monday, with food prices jumping 13 percent compared with the same period last year.
Ting Lu, the chief China economist at Nomura, said this week that flooding along the Yangtze river was partly behind the higher inflation, which he said had “severely constrained” production and shipments of agricultural products. Pork prices have already skyrocketed compared with last year because of the country’s African swine fever epidemic, which has sharply reduced the pig