The 1998 China Floods

A Basin-Wide Flood

After the flood season began in 1998, the Yangtze experienced a basin-wide flood, while the Nen and Songhua rivers in the north also saw exceptional flooding; 29 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities suffered losses of varying severity. The Jingjiang reach of the middle Yangtze — of which the saying goes, "of the Yangtze's ten thousand li, the danger lies in Jingjiang" — saw eight flood crests pass that year, and the Jingjiang levee became the main front of the flood fight. According to Xinhua, more than 200 million people were affected and direct economic losses exceeded 200 billion yuan; statistics cited by HK01 and other media give 4,150 deaths nationwide and direct losses of 255.1 billion yuan. An article in the Wilson Center's China Environment Series cites another estimate of more than 3,000 deaths and over US$12 billion in property damage and output losses.

The Jingjiang Diversion Dilemma

On 6 August 1998, as the fourth flood crest approached, the water level at Shashi on the Jingjiang reach rose to 44.68 meters — above the record of the great 1954 flood — meeting the State Council's criteria for activating the Jingjiang flood-diversion zone. That day Vice-Premier Wen Jiabao arrived in Jingzhou to take charge on the spot. Within 16 hours, 330,000 people and 18,000 draft cattle in the diversion zone in Gong'an County, Hubei, were evacuated to safety; on 16 August, 22 tons of TNT were buried beneath the silt-retaining dike at the zone's northern sluice, ready to blow the levee. On 17 August the Shashi level peaked at 45.22 meters, but the diversion gates were never opened; the rain then eased, the water receded, and the explosives were not detonated. According to The Paper, the emergency evacuation itself caused 1,644 casualties, including 99 deaths.

The Jiujiang Breach

On 7 August 1998 the city flood wall at Jiujiang, Jiangxi, was breached, threatening the city and the Beijing–Kowloon railway. Large numbers of PLA troops and local people were thrown into plugging the breach. According to Xinhua, more than 300,000 officers and soldiers of the PLA and People's Armed Police took part in the summer's flood fight. The government later summed up the spirit of the campaign as the "1998 flood-fighting spirit" — "united as one, standing together as a fortress, unafraid of hardship, fighting tenaciously, steadfast and daring to win".

Post-Flood Policy: From Dikes to Reforestation

After the floods China sharply increased investment in water infrastructure. At the end of 1998 the state launched a project to reinforce the main Yangtze dikes; according to HK01, investment in 1999 alone equaled all such investment since 1949. At the same time the government identified deforestation and the cultivation of steep slopes as major aggravating factors, launching the Natural Forest Protection Program and the Slope Land Conversion ("Grain for Green") Program, which banned or sharply curtailed natural-forest logging in the upper Yangtze and elsewhere and returned steep farmland to forest and grassland. The Three Gorges Dam had not yet been completed, and there was no large reservoir on the upper Yangtze that could be used to hold back floodwaters.

Assessments and Debates

Official accounts present the 1998 flood fight as a model of the Party leading soldiers and civilians to victory over an exceptional natural disaster, emphasizing the army's shock role and the "1998 flood-fighting spirit." Researchers focus more on the human factors and policy consequences: Runsheng Yin and colleagues treat the floods as a turning point where "crisis triggers action," directly giving rise to unprecedented forest-protection and slope-conversion programs, while arguing that major policy and technical changes would be needed for those programs to work; other research notes that the hydrological relationship between forests and floods is not scientifically settled. The experience of residents of the Jingjiang diversion zone, meanwhile, shows the impact on ordinary lives of a diversion system built on "sacrificing the part to save the whole."