(English) July 28, 2012
As the capital floods, its government carries the can
FOR a capital city which, unusually, is situated neither on a coastline nor along the banks of a big river, Beijing has been under water a lot of late. In June last year violent rainstorms overwhelmed the antiquated drainage system, inundating roads and bringing the bustling city to a standstill. This year saw an even more devastating downpour. Officials called the storm on July 21st the worst in Beijing since records began in 1951, and initially said it had killed 37 people. Many in Beijing were convinced that was a serious underestimate; indeed the government has since been revising the death toll upwards. Currently it stands at 77. Questions are being asked about whether money spent on “vanity” projects like skyscrapers and Olympic parks might have been better spent on basic infrastructure.
A more common problem is a shortage of water. Beijing perches precariously close to the Gobi desert, and for centuries planners have worried about how to bring water into it, not how to divert it elsewhere. Guo Shoujing, a 13th-century scientist, is still revered for designing a network of lakes, weirs and waterways. These tinkled through the palaces of Kublai Khan and his descendants while barges from the south came up to the capital.
Drainage was left to open sewers, canals and sluices, which often proved ineffective. Over the past 1,000 years the city has suffered more than 100 serious floods, with those in 1626 and 1890 especially disastrous. Both came towards the end of imperial dynasties, when corruption and mismanagement led to the neglect of public works. The current drainage system dates from the 1950s and is based on a Soviet design, which relies on pipes rather than sewers. Many of Beijing’s waterways were filled in, leaving just this creaky relic of Sino-Soviet amity to save its streets from flooding.
When it failed this time, Beijing’s residents did their best, opening their homes and workplaces to those in need, using social media to direct volunteers, and providing a free shuttle service in their cars for the thousands stranded at the airport. Online, moving images appeared of ordinary people plunging into flooded roadways to rescue motorists trapped in their cars.
In a since-deleted essay posted on his microblog, Li Chengpeng, a social critic, praised the heroism of the volunteer rescue workers and castigated officials for not doing more. Stressing the “historic” nature of the huge storm, the government tried to redirect public attention towards official clean-up efforts. But many Beijingers remain sceptical. Take one wry comment on a microblog translated by China Digital Times, a website: “In my brief existence, a once-in-a-century solar eclipse has happened twice, a once-in-500-year flood has happened ten times, and a once-in-a-millennium earthquake has happened twice. The only thing that hasn’t happened is a once-every-five-year general election.” Online censors swiftly removed the post.
Some bloggers also drew unflattering comparisons with Hong Kong, which this week endured Typhoon Vicente, its most powerful storm since 1999, one strong enough to snap tree trunks in half. No one died. While Beijing’s bloggers vented spleen about the government’s ineptitude, Hong Kong’s transport secretary was fretting over a railway disruption that stranded some passengers overnight in air-conditioned stations. Hong Kong owes its resilience and disaster preparedness to the predictability of its seasonal storms, to its wealth and to public pressure. Beijing’s weather may be less reliable and its government less well-off. But its people are converging on the Hong Kong model.
Source: The Economist
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