Central China Holds Its Breath

The flood crest came and went. So far, giant Dongting Lake has held steady against the mighty Yangtze, which crashed into it Sunday as the river hurtled on its annual path of destruction.

Yet no one dared to let his guard down as fresh rains began pounding still perilously swollen waterways today.

“This is no time to catch our breath,” said He Liang, an official at the anti-flood command center here in the capital of central Hunan province, on Sunday. “Water levels remain above the danger zone. Landslides and dike leaks continue.”

As he spoke, more than a million soldiers, peasants and rescue workers were toiling to fortify embankments and fill holes along the Dongting’s 580-mile defensive shield. Water levels around China’s second-largest freshwater lake have reached near-historic highs this summer as flooding around the country has claimed almost 1,000 lives.

The deluge around the lake began to subside slightly Sunday, suggesting that the region could be spared the calamity that befell the country in 1998, leaving more than 4,000 people dead.

But depending on how much water Mother Nature dumps on the area in the next few days, the crisis may be far from over.

“A little rain is OK, but a lot of rain could make things even worse than 1998,” He said.

And even if Hunan, the birthplace of Mao Tse-tung and current Premier Zhu Rongji, survives this year’s scare, raging torrents will probably find new victims downstream.

Next stop for the Yangtze is the capital of Hubei province, Wuhan, an industrial city of 7 million. Authorities there declared a state of emergency over the weekend and braced for stormy weather expected in the next few days. Farther out, traditionally vulnerable provinces such as Anhui and Jiangxi were also racing to defend themselves.

Unlike in Europe, where recent floods represented a once-in-a-century disaster, deluges are annual scourges in China.

Officials are quick to point out how much work they have done since the 1998 tragedy, which was caused by burst dikes and weak banks. They credit better management of these fortifications and various infrastructure improvements with keeping people relatively safe this year.

But critics remind them that the chronic floods are also man-made. In the 1950s and ‘60s, the government encouraged peasants to fill up parts of the Dongting and turn them into farms. Sediment buildup and soil erosion from over-logging elevated water levels in the lake and severely hampered its ability to act as a natural overflow basin for the tempestuous Yangtze.

Trying to undo its mistakes, Beijing has begun ordering resettlement and a restoration of the original habitat around the lake. But these are costly and time-consuming ventures.

The state has also stepped up its efforts to erect the biggest and most expensive hydroelectric project in the world. The controversial Three Gorges Dam is billed as the ultimate solution to centuries of floods that have ripped through the cradle of Chinese civilization.

Critics charge that the dam’s real mission is more electricity generation than flood control. Also, the reservoir’s colossal scale and potential for sediment accumulation could make breaks and spillovers unthinkable catastrophes.

But Chinese officials have invested too much not to be confident of success.

When the Three Gorges project is finally finished, said Qiu Shunling, a Yangtze River researcher in Hubei, “we won’t see another flood for at least a hundred years.”