Flood 'management'
Zhang Kai Every year China suffers from floods. But this year has been terrible. Since June, eight separate floods have ravished the upper and middle reaches of the Yangtze River. The floods in the oil field region of Daqing, in the North East, were the
Over 3,000 people have died. According to official reports, 21.2 million hectares are flooded, of which 13m are devastated. Over 223m people were directly affected. Almost five million houses have been destroyed. The total direct economic loss is US$19.6 billion.
These statistics must be read with caution. The convention in China is to report on the positive and minimise or dismiss the negative. The media was instructed not to report on casualties or "bad news" during the flooding.
Hu Angang of the Academy of Social Sciences estimates the direct cost of the floods at $29-35bn. This is almost double the estimate given by Deputy Premier Wen Jiabao. One government figure has even said that the direct economic loss from natural disasters including floods and droughts had been at least $23bn every year since 1996.
The Chinese authorities had always put the major blame of floods to torrential rains. But the flood flow this year was smaller than in 1954.
The reason the water level was higher than 1954 is inadequate flood control constructions, devastation of the environment, serious deforestation at the upper reaches, serious soil erosion, and sedimentation of lakes and rivers.
Another major reason is the meagre investments into water conservancy and flood prevention. It is hard to know how much is spent on these areas. But it cannot be much. Official statistics for 1997 give only a total of $5.5bn for all investments into agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, fishery and water conservancy. This compares to a massive $298bn of investments
Some of the problem has been caused by logging by local residents and the turning of forests into farmland. But a major part of logging activity is conducted by the 26 International Viewpoint #305 November 1998 state. There is a quota: 64 million cubic metres in 1997.
In the frantic search for economic growth and quick profits, develop ment projects have increased the surface area of smaller rivers and lakes, and increased sedimentation.
But the problem is not new. The New China News Agency reported from Chengdu on August 24 that the sediments from Chuan River (which flow into the Three Gorges dam zone) have exceeded 600m tonnes every year since the 1950s.
On August 28, the Ministry of Forestry prohibited all logging of natural forests along the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, the cordoning off of mountain slopes for replanting of trees, the conversion of some farmland back into forests, and the closing of the lumber trade market and about half of the state-owned forestry industries.
Despite the welcome new decrees on logging and forestry, there has been little active investment in water conservancy and flood control. The state recently announced an additional 100 billion yuan of state bonds for infrastructure constructions, but these are mostly for communication, road networks, urban facilities, housing, and grain storage. Not for water works.
The victims of the floods face serious hardship. The deputy mayor of Daqing said 800,000 people in her area alone need warm clothes and shoes. The region needs to find 450,000 cotton quilts. An estimated 970,000 people urgently needed
Among the destroyed buildings are about 5m m', worth about $0.7bn. The Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Finance issued an emergency fund of $2m to provinces with serious devastation. In other words, an insignificant
As for the livelihood and production in the flood areas, the state is "making plans to organise the masses affected by the floods to develop production by self-help, in order to revive production and rebuild the home"
The term "self-help", like the term self-reliance, employed to shift the responsibility from the government to the ordinary people
There is widespread frustration with government action, and support for increasing resources for the damaged regions, including for flood control. * Source: October Review Vol.25 Issue 4. G.P.O.Box 10144, Hong Kong. e-mail: <or@earthling.net>
Pakistan's rulers have announced the introduction of Islamic law. For Arif Azad, this is only the latest elite conspiracy against the people. The detonation of several nuclear devices on May 31 in Chagai, in the desert province of Baluchistan, brought a rare elation to the depressed mood of people long used to being trampled upon by the venal political elite and civilianmilitary complex which runs their
Pakistan has been ruled by the military for most part of its history since partition and independence from British colonial rule in 1947. Neither the generals, nor the handful of civilian politicians have stopped the country's "drift to nowhere."
A number of factors dictated the rapid reaction to India's nuclear test bombings earlier in May.
Firstly Pakistan's military, facing the prospect of a slight reduction in the bloated defence budget - two thirds of total budget expenditure goes into defence and debt-servicing. The generals jumped at the opportunity to prevent cutbacks and enhance the army's self-appointed role as guardian of ideological borders (which means a state of war preparedness against the ideological and territorial infiltration of "Hindu India").
Secondly, having damaged its professional army reputation because of repeated encroachment into the political arena, the Pakistani army was keen to demonstrate that, at the most basic level, it possesses an effective "deterrent' to any future agression from India.
Third, immense popular pressure was piled on Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in the belief that nuclear testing and "weaponisation" is Pakistan's ticket to the nuclear club of powerful nations.
In order not to be outdone, Sharif's main rival, Pakistan Peoples Party leader Benazir Bhutto, began to beat the drum of anti-Indian xenophobia. She even accused the Prime Minister of wearing bangles, that is of not being man enough to match the Indian nuclear tests and uphold national honour.
This stoking of chauvinist fires was designed to deflect attention from the corruption scandals that her husband and herself are mired in at the moment.
Further, Pakistani nuclear scientists, who over the years had been making boastful claims of Pakistan's advanced nuclear capability, needed this explosion to justify the massive expenditure on the nuclear programme.
The Government's decision to carry out the testing was premised on the belief that if and when international sanctions were imposed on Pakistan, its Muslim Arab friends would chip in with some dollops of aid.
Once the euphoria had melted away