Swathes of China are on high alert for flash floods and landslides as unrelenting rain triggered deadly disasters and forced evacuations in multiple provinces.
The torrential downpours, part of the annual “Plum Rains” season, have swept from the southwest through central China and up to the northeast, prompting red alerts in Sichuan, Gansu and Liaoning provinces.
In Henan province’s Taiping town, rescue workers recovered five bodies and were searching for three missing people after a nearby river burst its banks, unleashing a sudden flash flood.
More than 1,000 emergency personnel have been deployed to assist residents, state media reported. Vice premier Zhang Guoqing urged officials in Hebei to act urgently to protect lives as the rain continued.
In neighbouring Gansu province, two people died when heavy rains caused a landslide at a construction site.
Dramatic scenes unfolded in Guangxi, where video footage showed a five-storey building under construction collapsing into the Lengshui river as the ground beneath it gave way in waterlogged soil. The river saw its worst flooding since at least 2005, local media reported.
In Guangxi’s Pingliu village, landslides destroyed two houses and forced the evacuation of 21 people.
The Plum Rains have disrupted travel, with train services to Beijing suspended and flights delayed or cancelled at one of the capital’s airports.
The Chinese finance ministry this week announced an additional £14.3m in emergency disaster relief funds to support affected regions in Guizhou and Hunan provinces. The allocation followed a disbursement of £16.3m on 23 June.
Guizhou’s Qiandongnan Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture, including Rongjiang and Congjiang counties, have been particularly hit hard. Rongjiang, known as the birthplace of China’s popular Village Super League football tournament, has suffered two severe floods in less than a week, with the stadium submerged twice in five days.
The ministry said the funds would go towards meeting urgent needs, including search and rescue operations, relocation of affected residents, temporary living assistance, and rebuilding of damaged homes. Authorities said the support would help restore daily life and economic activity as quickly as possible in the worst-hit communities.
Extreme rainfall and severe flooding, increasingly linked by experts to the climate crisis, are testing China’s ageing flood defences and threatening its vast agricultural heartland. Last year, economic losses from similar storms exceeded £7bn.
The national meteorological centre forecasts more storms across the north and the west even as the east coast bakes under a scorching sun.