SHANGHAI: The central Chinese province of Jiangxi has declared a water supply “red alert” for the first time after the Poyang freshwater lake, the country’s biggest, dwindled to a record low, the Jiangxi government said on Friday (Sep 23).

The Poyang Lake, normally a vital flood outlet for the Yangtze, China’s longest river, has been suffering from drought since June, with water levels at a key monitoring spot falling from 19.43m to 7.1m over the last three months.

The Jiangxi Water Monitoring Centre said Poyang’s water levels would fall even further in coming days, with rainfall still minimal. Precipitation since July is 60 per cent lower than a year earlier, it said.

As many as 267 weather stations across China reported record temperatures in August, and a long dry spell across the Yangtze river basin severely curtailed hydropower output and damaged crop growth ahead of the autumn harvest.

PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island: In a world beset by multiple crises, officials may be looking past the biggest threat of all: China.

The talk among central bankers at the Jackson Hole Federal Reserve Conference focused on inflation and rising interest rates. Absent was any mention that just 10 days beforehand, the People’s Bank of China did exactly the opposite, unexpectedly cutting its key interest rate.

China is beset by three distressing Ds: Debt, disease and drought. They belie a slowdown that is not raising sufficient alarm bells among investors and policymakers. China remains heavily integrated into the global supply chain and is a potential driver of global demand as one of the biggest markets for foreign goods and services.

But economic news from China has gone from bad to worse. Manufacturing contracted in July, retail sales, industrial output and investment all slowed and youth unemployment reached nearly 20 per cent.

There has been a record outflow of portfolio investments via the Stock and Bond Connects. More than 20 per cent of American multinationals are pessimistic about the five-year business outlook, more than double the percentage last year, according to a US-China Business Council poll.

The median 2022 gross domestic product forecast was recently cut to 3.5 per cent, in a country that was growing at 6 per cent two years ago.

BEIJING: A power crunch driven by drought in China’s southwestern province of Sichuan, the country’s biggest hydropower producer, has started to ease as temperatures fall, state media reported on Sunday (Aug 28).

Power for ordinary industrial and commercial users has been restored while that for large industrial users will be gradually restored, except for highly energy-intensive industries, state media reported, citing the State Grid Corp.

A long drought across the Yangtze basin has crimped electricity supply, prompting concerns that China could suffer another devastating power shortage.

But demand is easing as the letup in temperatures, which had exceeded 40 degrees Celsius in many areas, has tempered a surge in air conditioner use, state media said.

Sichuan generates 30 per cent of China’s hydroelectric power, usually delivering a massive power surplus to the rest of the country.

But it is now receiving electricity from other provinces after weeks of minimal rainfall and extreme heat.

JIUJIANG: Teams of drillers are working long hours to build wells to fight a devastating drought sweeping parts of China, farmers in Jiujiang city in the country’s central Jiangxi province told Reuters on Saturday (Aug 27).

“These villages, all of them, are particularly dry,” said Gao Pucha, 42, who led one drilling team in Dashan village in Jiujiang.

“When we got the notice to drill wells, we got up early and worked late, more than 15 hours a day.”

In another nearby village, a 72-year-old man surnamed Chen scoured the fields for ears of rice left over from the paddy harvester to take home and feed to his chickens.

“Sesame, corn, sweet potatoes, cotton in the drylands are all dried up,” Chen told Reuters.

Chen added that only the rice fields could be filled with water from nearby reservoirs, “so they just filled them with a little bit of water and it was a little bit better”.

A blistering heatwave has engulfed China in the country’s hottest summer on record, subsuming half its land in drought.

The world’s second-largest economy has experienced more than 70 days of heatwaves, flash floods and droughts – phenomena that scientists say are becoming more frequent and intense due to climate change.

Southern China has recorded its longest continuous period of high temperatures since records began more than 60 years ago, the agriculture ministry said earlier this week.

The worst-affected area is the Yangtze River basin, which stretches from coastal Shanghai to Sichuan province in China’s south-west.

Sichuan province, China’s biggest hydropower producer, has seen its supply capability slump due to a long drought across the Yangtze basin, stoking fears the country could suffer another devastating power shortage.

In parts of Sichuan and Chongqing, locals seeking cooler temperatures have taken to sleeping in car parks and subway stations due to daily power cuts.

Diners in Chongqing, meanwhile, are heading to restaurants housed in World War II-era air raid shelters in a bid to escape the heat.

And along the Yangtze and its tributary the Jialing, people have been taking the opportunity to explore newly exposed riverbeds and swim in shallow waters.

Here’s what the situation looks like on the ground:

BEIJING: Plunging water levels of the Yangtze River have revealed a submerged island in China’s southwestern city of Chongqing and a trio of Buddhist statues on it that are believed to be 600 years old, state media Xinhua has reported.

The three statues were found on the highest part of the island reef called Foyeliang, initially identified as built during the Ming and Qing dynasties. One of the statues depicts a monk sitting on a lotus pedestal.

The Yangtze’s water levels have been falling rapidly due to a drought and a heatwave in China’s southwestern region.

Rainfall in the Yangtze basin has been around 45 per cent lower than normal since July, and high temperatures are likely to persist for at least another week, official forecasts said.

As many as 66 rivers across 34 counties in Chongqing have dried up, state broadcaster CCTV said on Friday (Aug 19).

Weeks of baking drought across Europe have also revealed long-submerged treasures.

In Spain, archaeologists have been delighted by the emergence of a prehistoric stone circle dubbed the “Spanish Stonehenge”.

Another of Europe’s mighty rivers, the Danube, has fallen to one of its lowest levels in almost a century, exposing the hulks of more than 20 German warships sunk during World War Two near Serbia’s river port town of Prahovo.

SHANGHAI: China has issued its first national drought alert of the year as authorities battle forest fires and mobilise specialist teams to protect crops from scorching temperatures across the Yangtze river basin.

The national “yellow alert”, issued late on Thursday (Aug 18), comes after regions from Sichuan in the southwest to Shanghai in the Yangtze delta have experienced weeks of extreme heat, with government officials repeatedly citing global climate change as the cause. The alert is two notches short of the most serious warning on Beijing’s scale.

In one of the Yangtze’s important flood basins in central China’s Jiangxi province, the Poyang Lake has now shrunk to a quarter of its normal size for this time of year, state news agency Xinhua said on Thursday.

As many as 66 rivers across 34 counties in the southwestern region of Chongqing have dried up, state broadcaster CCTV said on Friday.

Rainfall in Chongqing this year is down 60 per cent compared to the seasonal norm, and the soil in several districts is severely short of moisture, CCTV said, citing local government data.

The district of Beibei, north of Chongqing’s urban centre, saw temperatures hit 45 degrees Celsius on Thursday, according to China’s weather bureau.

Chongqing accounted for six of the 10 hottest locations in the country on Friday morning, with temperatures in the district of Bishan already approaching 39 degrees Celsius. Shanghai was already at 37 degrees  Celsius.

The Chongqing region’s infrastructure and emergency services have come under increasing strain, with firefighters on high alert as mountain and forest blazes erupted across the region. State media also reported an increase in cases of heatstroke.