The Zhengzhou “7·20” Rainstorm Disaster (2021)

The extreme rainstorm

From 17 to 23 July 2021 Henan province was hit by historically rare torrential rain centred on Zhengzhou. According to the Beijing News, from 4 p.m. on 20 July one-hour rainfall at the Zhengzhou station reached 201.9 mm, exceeding China’s record for hourly rainfall on land, after the city’s observatory had issued seven consecutive red rainstorm warnings. A 2022 study by Li Changjia and colleagues noted that this set a new hourly record among China’s 2,418 national weather stations, and that 622.7 mm fell at the station in the 24 hours from 2 a.m. on 20 July — almost the city’s mean annual precipitation of 634.4 mm.

The State Council investigation later reported that the disaster affected 14.786 million people in 150 counties, cities and districts of Henan, leaving 398 dead or missing, 380 of them (95.5%) in Zhengzhou, with direct economic losses of 120.06 billion yuan, 40.9 billion of them in Zhengzhou.

Metro Line 5 and the Jingguang North Road tunnel

On the evening of 20 July severe waterlogging around the Wulongkou depot of Zhengzhou Metro Line 5 broke through the flood wall on the depot access line and poured into the main-line tunnel, trapping a train between Shakou Road and Haitansi stations. A trapped passenger, the Henan Traffic Radio reporter Ding Xiaopei, later recounted that after the train stopped an announcement called it a temporary halt; at about 6 p.m. the train reversed less than 200 metres before it could go no further; the water and the lack of air worsened until someone broke a window with fire equipment; she was rescued at about 9:30 p.m. Zhengzhou Metro ordered the whole network shut at 6:10 p.m. In the early hours of 21 July the city reported 12 deaths on the train; on 27 July it said two more victims had been found, bringing the toll to 14.

According to the 21st Century Business Herald, citing the investigation, the depot wall had been designed for a once-in-a-century waterlogging depth of 0.24 metres, whereas the investigators’ experts calculated it should have been 0.5 metres, and the builder had replaced more than 40 per cent of the new wall with temporary construction hoarding. After a switch-fault alarm the train had been held at Haitansi station and then released at 17:46 without the cause being established or the danger understood; Zhengzhou Metro Group did not order a network-wide suspension until 18:04 and never activated its emergency response. The same day the Jingguang Expressway North Tunnel also flooded with loss of life; the investigation likewise ruled it a liability incident.

Harassment of foreign journalists

Foreign coverage of the disaster became contentious. According to the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China, BBC reporter Robin Brant, who reported from outside Shakou Road station, became the target of a viral online campaign, and Henan’s Communist Youth League asked its 1.6 million Weibo followers to report his whereabouts; days later Zhengzhou residents surrounded a Deutsche Welle reporter and a Los Angeles Times reporter, mistaking the former for Brant, and AFP journalists were forced to delete footage at a flooded tunnel. On 29 July the US State Department said it was “deeply concerned with the increasingly harsh surveillance, harassment, and intimidation of U.S. and other foreign journalists” in China. The same day Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said false reports by certain Western media had angered the Chinese public and that the reporting environment for foreign journalists in China was open and free.

The State Council investigation and accountability

With the approval of the Party Central Committee, the State Council set up an investigation team led by the Ministry of Emergency Management. Its report, released on 21 January 2022, classified the event as an especially serious natural disaster but found that the Zhengzhou Party committee and government and others lacked risk awareness, were inadequately prepared, organised prevention poorly and mishandled the emergency, committing dereliction of duty, “in particular, deaths occurred in the metro and tunnels that should not have happened.” The metro and tunnel deaths were ruled liability incidents and the overtopping of the Guojiazui reservoir an illegal incident. The report also found that Zhengzhou had concealed 139 deaths and disappearances at various stages: it failed to report through the disaster system for four days from 25 to 28 July, had reported only 97 by 29 July, and reported more only after two urgent provincial notices. Among the lessons it listed was urban construction “valuing appearances over substance.”

In decisions announced the same day, former Zhengzhou Party secretary Xu Liyi received a serious intra-Party warning and a demotion; mayor Hou Hong and 88 other officials were held accountable, and eight employees of the companies that designed and built the Line 5 depot were arrested. Li Changjia and colleagues noted that Zhengzhou had been selected as a candidate sponge-city pilot in 2016 with planned investment of 53.48 billion yuan in 2017–2020, but that facilities built to a once-in-200-years standard were overwhelmed by the storm.