Faced with China’s most searing heat wave in six decades, factories in the country’s southwest are being forced to close. A severe drought has shrunk rivers, disrupting the region’s supply of water and hydropower and prompting officials to limit electricity to businesses and homes. In two cities, office buildings were ordered to shut off the air conditioning to spare an overextended electrical grid, while elsewhere in southern China local governments urged residents and businesses to conserve energy.

The rolling blackouts and factory shutdowns, which affected Toyota and Foxconn, a supplier for Apple, point to the ways that extreme weather is adding to China’s economic woes. The economy has been headed toward its slowest pace of growth in years, dragged down by the country’s stringent Covid policy of lockdowns, quarantines and travel restrictions, as consumers tightened spending and factories produced less. Youth unemployment has reached a record high, while trouble in the real estate sector has set off an unusual surge of public discontent.

Now China is also facing an intense heat wave that has swept across the country for more than two months, from central Sichuan Province to coastal Jiangsu, with temperatures often exceeding 40 Celsius, or 104 Fahrenheit. In the southwestern metropolis of Chongqing, the mercury rose to 113 degrees on Thursday, prompting the government to issue its highest heat warning for the eighth time this summer. The country has recorded an average of 12 days of high temperatures this summer, about five days more than usual, and the heat wave is forecast to persist for at least another week, according to statistics from the official China Meteorological Center.

The intense heat is expected to significantly reduce the size of China’s rice harvest because it has caused long periods of drought, drying up rice paddies that are irrigated by rain, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs.

“At this time, the heat has the biggest impact, and has brought about extremely unfavorable effects,” Fang Fuping, a researcher at the China Rice Research Institute in Hangzhou, told an official news outlet.

The intense weather is affecting other agriculture as well. In the eastern city of Hangzhou, tea farmers preparing for the fall harvest have covered their crops with nets in an effort to shield them from the scorching heat.

In the cities, motorists donned face coverings and sleeves to protect themselves from sunburn. Residents and delivery workers sought cool in underground shelters or with a swim in rivers and pools. Office workers tried to cool off with ice and frozen snacks.

It’s too hot, like a furnace,” said Ella Wan, a 24-year-old property agent in the eastern city of Hangzhou. She found welcome relief from tepid office air conditioning by placing a large bucket of ice on the floor by her feet. “It has an effect on both the physics and the psychology,” she said.

Humans were not the only ones oppressed by the heat. Pandas in zoos lay on sheets of melting ice. Pigs being transported by truck in the southwestern city of Chongqing became dehydrated, prompting firefighters to hose them down. Chickens rejected their feed and struggled to lay eggs in the heat, causing the egg prices to surge across the country, according to state media reports.