In our previous newsletter, we gave a few links about the flood. That was just the beginning.
First, people noticed that not only the water rises super fast, but the colour of the water is yellow. This means that the water is not rain water, but water coming down from upstream. (slightly bigger version here). This is from a city south of Beijing, called Zhuozhou. The city and its surrounding villages quickly attracted national and international attention because of the severe flood it suffered in the following days.
Later, more videos showed that people did not have time to escape. You can see people next to their cars that were swept away by the yellow muddy water. People are speculating that the local people did not get any warning beforehand.
In fact, on the night of July 31st, Zhuozhou city asked for help on Chinese social media. First, the police went onto Weibo and posted two messages asking for help. It claimed that the west side of the city was severely flooded and they needed boats to move people. But later, both messages were taken off. Citizens then flooded social media with cries for help. Many claimed that they received no warning to move. Some say the first floor of the building was underwater very fast. And when they called the government emergency numbers for help, no one responded.
It turns out that Zhuozhou has many book publishers, they print and store books in the city. So one of the victims is the books inventory. Since no one get any warning, most of the books got submerged in the water. Some book producers said they lost millions of yuan of books overnight.
On August 2nd, the water was still rising. There was very little news in the government-controlled media. On social media, people spread news/videos of the situation on the ground: the rescue teams are farmers from all over China. They said that they saw many people in the flooded zone crying for help.
Meanwhile, many rescue teams could not enter the city of Zhuozhou because they needed a government invitation letter to enter on the highway. But the government could not issue any invitation letter because they lost their seals in the flood.
Rescue teams from outside that managed to get into the city were disappointed by the government: they claim that the government was bad-mouthing the rescue teams and would not provide any information nor help to coordinate the various teams. The government countered that they don’t need the rescue teams, although the rescue teams asked for no compensation. Eventually, some of the teams left bitterly.
A video that shows the depth of water in Zhuozhou, here is a screenshot:
But, the government seems to want to dump more water on Zhuozhou. A video from August 2nd of the confrontation between villagers and the police was circulating on social media. The police wanted to flatten the levy to let more water flood the village. The villagers were guarding the levy in anticipation of this act of betrayal. The villagers argued that they are not part of the flood retention zone and there are old people and children in the village. They also pointed out that there are designated flood zones where they can let the water go, but those zones were intact. Without any official documents, who is ordering them to open up the levy? The police and officials could not answer. They could not even disclose their official identity. Eventually, some people reported on social media, the villagers were taken away. But the video made by the villager was all over social media.
A few days later, in a nearby city, Gaobeidian, villagers were more successful at fending off the ‘unknown people’ who came to destroy a highway that also serves as a levy.
On August 8th, some Zhuozhou villagers went back to their homes, only to find that their flooded village became a trash dump for the city government. The video shows a long line of garbage trucks (about three dozen). Villages called for reporters and social media influencers to come and report. They said that there was still water in the village and the stench from the dumped dead animals was unbearable. The official from the city explained that they chose this village because they have wide roads.
In Zhuozhou, on August 6th, one social media account reported seeing dozens of dead bodies of humans and animals in the surrounding villages. On August 11th, one man uploaded a video of his village where 14 of his relatives died or not found. But the official number of death toll released on August 11th was 29.
On August 2nd, people were searching for news reports on social media about the flood they could only find one mention among the top 15 headlines of the day: “The villagers said that they did not take the warning of flooding seriously”.
Meanwhile, the party secretary of Hebei province (Zhuozhou and Gaobeidian are in this province) announced:
Hebei Provincial Party Secretary Ni Yuefeng: we will strengthen the communication with the national flood prevention headquarter, in accordance with the relevant work requirements, orderly open the flood storage and retention area, to reduce the pressure of flood control in Beijing, and resolutely act as the good “moat” of the capital.
People were shocked at his statement, that his province is just a moat of Beijing. Many argue that for him to get promoted, all he needs is the approval from Xi.
You might ask: why Xi would appreciate him doing this? We will explain in Part 2!
On August 6th, a military top newspaper published an op-ed, “Military is for preparation of wars”. Many think the article implies that the military is not for rescue missions. In the past, disaster is a time for military propaganda - you will see countless articles and stories of soldiers helping civilians. But this year, there is none.
People outside China also noticed that Tsai Ing-wen, president of Taiwan, tweeted out her thoughts on the people affected by the flood, and Xi Jinping was expressing condolences to victims of a suicide bomb in Pakistan, on August 2nd.
Up to now, what is your impression of the Chinese government?
Many people noticed that almost all media outlets in China are blaming the villagers for not getting out of harm’s way on their own, except one newspaper that honestly described that the warnings did not reach the villagers and rescue teams were stopped for hours because they did not have the required documents to get into the city.
Some local people shared a screenshot of the notice they received from the government:
All: important notice, please pay attention:
we got direction from higher up, unless you are a rescue worker, every residential area is in temporary lock down, all residents stay in.
Meanwhile, CCTV is showing footage of stranded residents being rescued from a rooftop, except that you can see later in the video, the water level on the street is very low. There was no need for a helicopter.
Beijing red cross published a photo of their rescue team helping out. People pointed out that everyone in the photo had super clean clothes.
While the current government is losing the hearts and mind of people, Jiang Zemin became popular. All previous national leaders did go to the disaster right away and acted as the chief of the rescue mission. You can call it propaganda. But at least they cared enough to pretend.
The photo of Jiang got censored on Weixin quickly.
Zhu Rongji, prime minister of Jiang Zemin, warned the people about preparation for flood release: people watched that video with nostalgia.
And a video of Hu Jintao working with the military to send rescue goods was also uploaded.
Xi made people revalue previous leaders and miss the “good old time”. Some people warned that 20 years from now, we might miss today as a “good old time”.
We will continue tomorrow, explaining to you my understanding of why the government totally ignored the human and economic cost of Zhuozhou. Hint: it is not Beijing, but a city you might never heard of, Xiong’an.
But if your Chinese is good, you can watch this YouTube video: “His toy and your homes” produced by Lilaoshi, he explained the flood very well.