July 23 marked the third day of major flooding in the Chinese city of Zhengzhou in Henan Province. Based on my observations on how the Chinese regime handles natural disasters, authorities would use the first three days to gather data before releasing an official statement.
Beijing’s Propaganda Routines on Floods
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) propaganda focuses on three points: to emphasize the severity of natural disasters; to publicize the regime’s initiative in emergency rescues; and to underestimate the death toll.Disasters have occurred frequently in various parts of China in recent years, and the first thing that local governments do is to attribute the disasters to nature. Flood disasters have been publicized as “record-breaking rainfall,” “once in 50 years,” and “once in a hundred years,” and so on. This time, authorities described the Zhengzhou disaster as “once in 5,000 years historical record rainfall”—even experts try to justify this claim. On the website of the Henan Provincial Department of Water Resources, scientists offer an explanation with probabilistic algorithms.
Zhengzhou Floods: What Are the Man-Made Factors?
When encountering natural disasters, the Chinese regime looks at three issues: whether the early warning mechanism is activated; whether the disaster is natural or man-made; and accountability.Accountability is determined by how the first two issues are handled and the number of deaths. But, there’s always room for interpretation.
The disaster warning determines the fate of the officials. During the 2008 Sichuan and 2010 Yushu earthquakes, the lack of an early warning system became a major focus of accountability.
The real issue is that local authorities have ignored the waterlogging problem for the past 20 years—Zhengzhou is known as the “sponge city.” The waterlogging is a man-made disaster caused by successive government projects.
A collapsed dam is another man-made factor in the Zhengzhou floods. It’s noteworthy that authorities produced conflicting reports on the situation. The Emergency Management Department issued a report on the failed dam, the Guojiazui Reservoir in Zhengzhou, at 1:30 a.m. on July 21. But, the Ministry of Water Resources issued another report saying that as of 7 a.m. on July 21, “there was no breach of the dam, but only large-scale erosion of the surrounding slopes [landslides].”
A video from the site showed that Zhengzhou’s Jingguang Expressway Tunnel was suddenly inundated and witnesses said that it happened in less than five minutes.
On July 21, state-run media Xinhua quoted Xi Jinping as saying, “Some rivers have exceeded the warning levels and some dams have been breached.”
This statement carries two significant pieces of information: first, the local authorities reported the situation to Xi and admitted that the dams failed; second, Xi had warned local authorities to pay attention to rumors of flood discharge.
It’s important to know that Chinese netizens called it a “flood discharge” and not a “dam breach.”
Death Toll Determines Disaster Levels and Officials’ Posts
On July 23, the regime announced that more than 50 people died in Zhengzhou’s floods. The day before, the local government reported that there were 33 deaths and 8 people missing. It’s believed the the death toll will continue to climb.According to a report by Radio Free Asia, there’s a large number of online messages from people looking for their missing loved ones in Zhengzhou and the neighboring areas. One website listed information on more than 130 missing persons. People are still gathering around the disaster-stricken Jingguang Expressway Tunnel looking for their loved ones.
Based on my years of experience, formulating a quota for the number of casualties has been a tradition in the regime since the Mao era.
I was in China during the Qingshuihe explosion incident—a chemical plant exploded in Qingshuihe district of Shenzhen city in 1993. A reporter at the scene took nearly 80 photos of the deceased. Even though the death toll exceeded that number, the Ministry of Propaganda reported that only 3 people were killed by the explosion—2 deputy directors of the Public Security Bureau and a director of the local police station. The figures were fabricated because it was stipulated at that time that accidents involving more than 10 deaths were considered to be very serious, and those in charge would be held accountable. Now it seems that the quota may have been reformulated.
The CCP censors information and prevents rumors from spreading online. I’ve observed that authorities always set the tone for the disaster, and catching rumormongers becomes a main focus on disaster management. The Henan provincial government issued a notice on the recent flooding, reminding the public to ignore rumors and not to spread them—this is an actual warning from the top.
Conclusion
Some experts believe the Zhengzhou floods will not be the last disaster in a Chinese city. There’s an article that’s been circulating on Chinese social media titled, “Look at the Ancients, Look at the Present Again: The Flood in the Central Plains in the Eyes of an Expert.” The author participated in the evaluation of the 2015 National Smart City Constructions. There is a passage that readers should keep in mind: “On top of the loose soil, there is only a shallow layer of cement topped with tiles for appearance purposes only. I have traveled all over China—east, west, north, and south. These face-saving projects are everywhere. Heavy rainfall, especially a 100-year flood, will hollow out the loose soil underneath.”In other words, as long as you live in a Chinese city and there is a heavy rainstorm, severe flooding could happen at any time. People must be prepared to deal with the situation and shouldn’t rely on Beijing’s disaster emergency model.
