Tag: Floods

Typhoon Dolphin Barrels Into China, Prompting Mass Evacuations

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A powerful tropical cyclone buffeted China on Sunday evening, prompting the authorities to evacuate more than a million people on the country’s eastern coast and cancel hundreds of flights, as the storm continued its long path of destruction across the Pacific Ocean. After forming near the Marshall Islands last month and traveling what meteorologists said was an unusually long distance, Dolphin pummeled Okinawa, Japan, injuring six people and cutting power to thousands over the weekend. It made landfall on Sunday evening near Yuhuan, a city in Zhejiang Province on China’s…

Typhoon Bavi Hits China, Causing Evacuations, Floods and Flight Delays

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Typhoon Bavi caused landslides and flooding over the weekend as it made landfall in eastern China, where the authorities evacuated almost two million people in anticipation of the strongest storm to hit the country this year. The typhoon touched down in the city of Taizhou in Zhejiang Province at around 11:20 p.m. on Saturday, lashing the area with winds of almost 90 miles per hour. It made a second landfall in the city of Wenzhou, also in Zhejiang, around midnight. Across the province, 1.7 million people were evacuated, many of…

Deadly Typhoon Bursts Dam Wall as Heavy Rains Inundate China

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new video loaded: Deadly Typhoon Bursts Dam Wall as Heavy Rains Inundate China <img alt="A nighttime view of vehicles on a flooded wharf, with tall buildings on the other side of the river." src="https://www.chinastrategy.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/deadly-typhoon-bursts-dam-wall-as-heavy-rains-inundate-china.jpg" data-testid="betamax-poster" sizes="(width < 1024px) 100vw, (width 0:43 Typhoon Maysak has been lashing southern China for days, bursting dam walls and inundating homes and farms. By Jiawei Wang July 7, 2026 2 <img loading="lazy" srcset="https://www.chinastrategy.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/deadly-typhoon-bursts-dam-wall-as-heavy-rains-inundate-china-17.jpg 400w, https://www.chinastrategy.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/deadly-typhoon-bursts-dam-wall-as-heavy-rains-inundate-china-18.jpg 735w, https://www.chinastrategy.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/deadly-typhoon-bursts-dam-wall-as-heavy-rains-inundate-china-1.jpg 1200w" sizes="(width <= 600px) 220px, (width Intense Storms Cause Flash Flooding Across Northeast 1:02 <img loading="lazy" srcset="https://www.chinastrategy.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/deadly-typhoon-bursts-dam-wall-as-heavy-rains-inundate-china-19.jpg 400w,…

Heavy Rain and Floods in China Kill at Least 22

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Heavy rain and flash floods in southwestern and central China this week killed at least 22 people, forced tens of thousands to evacuate their homes and flooded cities and farmland, Chinese state media reported. The storm — the most intense to hit China this year — began dumping rain in these areas on Friday, and up to 12 inches fell across seven provinces over about five days, state media reported. In Fangchenggang, a coastal city near Vietnam, total rainfall reached about 32 inches, according to Xinhua, China’s state news agency.…

Kongjian Yu Has a Plan for Urban Flooding: ‘Sponge Cities’

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Cities around the world face a daunting challenge in the era of climate change: Supercharged rainstorms are turning streets into rivers, flooding subway systems and inundating residential neighborhoods, often with deadly consequences. Kongjian Yu, a landscape architect and professor at Peking University, is developing what might seem like a counterintuitive response: Let the water in. “You cannot fight water,” he said. “You have to adapt to it.” Instead of putting in more drainage pipes, building flood walls and channeling rivers between concrete embankments, which is the usual approach to managing…

Storms Deluge Hong Kong and Southern Chinese Cities

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Torrential rains have pounded southern China, flooding low-lying homes and roads, choking expressways, and prompting officials to suspend classes while the record-breaking storms lingered over the region. By Friday morning, Shenzhen, a southern Chinese commercial city next to Hong Kong, had endured nearly eight inches of rain overnight, in the most intense downpour since records began in 1952, according to the city’s official news service. Hong Kong was hit by about six inches of rainfall in several hours. The Hong Kong Observatory headquarters recorded over six inches in just one…

When Tragedy Strikes in China, the Government Cracks Down on Grief

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Many innocent lives were lost to tragic events in China in the past month. So far we haven’t learned a single name of any of them from China’s government or its official media. Nor have we seen news interviews of family members talking about their loved ones. Those victims would include a coach and 10 members of a middle-school girls volleyball team who were killed in late July when the roof caved in on a gymnasium near the Siberian border. Despite an outpouring of public grief and anger around the…

Anger in China Over Flooding of Towns, in Part, to Save Beijing

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For days, the rain came down in sheets, pounding Beijing and areas around it in what the government said was the heaviest deluge China’s capital had seen since record keeping began 140 years ago. When the extreme downpour finally stopped on Tuesday, most of Beijing had been spared the worst — but partly because officials made sure the floodwaters went elsewhere. Officials in Hebei Province, which borders Beijing, had opened flood gates and spillways in seven low-lying flood control zones to prevent rivers and reservoirs from overflowing in Beijing and…

Typhoon Khanun Threatens Japan and China on Heels of Doksuri

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A powerful tropical cyclone was approaching islands in southern Japan on Tuesday, days after another one slammed into mainland China and the Philippines and left dozens of people dead or injured across the region. The new storm, Typhoon Khanun, was less than 200 miles southeast of a major United States military base in southern Japan’s Okinawa Prefecture on Tuesday, according to the United States military’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center in Hawaii. Khanun was producing maximum sustained winds of 138 miles per hour, making it the equivalent of a Category 4…

At Least 2 Dead in Heavy Rains and Flooding in Beijing

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Fierce rain and flooding pummeled Beijing on Monday, killing at least two people as the downpour triggered landslides and swept away cars on the city’s outskirts after the authorities issued a red alert for what they warned was the heaviest deluge in years. The intense rain since the weekend prompted Beijing to close tourist attractions like the ancient Forbidden City. But the worst effects have been felt in the city’s outer districts, where downpours overwhelmed riverbeds that usually stay dry for much of the year. By Monday afternoon, the Beijing…