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A massive drought, coupled with record temperatures, is devastating the Chinese economy, causing factory closures and blackouts.
The Chinese province of Sichuan, one of the country’s most populous and fastest growing industrial centers, has been hit by a severe drought that has caused little rainfall to power the hydroelectric dams that typically generate three-quarters of the area’s electricity. is sent to cities such as up to Shanghai, on The New York Times reported this week.
Lack of rain, compounded by scorching temperatures exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit, has left rivers with unusually low water levels. This shortage prevented the dams from providing enough electricity to support Sichuan Province. As a result, factories in the area were forced to close, sometimes for a week at a time.
In addition to factory closures, the power shortage has also caused continuous blackouts in some downstream areas of Sichuan Province in places like Chongqing City and adjacent Hubei Province.
NANJING, CHINA – AUGUST 24, 2022 – A large tidal flat is exposed along the Nanjing section of the Yangtze River in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China, August 24, 2022.
(CFOTO / Future Publishing via Getty Images)
“Part of the problem here is that China has a wider water shortage,” Dean Cheng, senior researcher at the Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center, told Fox News Digital. “Entire river systems in China have dried up. The Chinese are redirecting rivers from the south to the northern plains of China, including Beijing, because the rivers up there are drying up.”
Precipitation in the Yangtze Basin has been around 45% lower than normal since July and high temperatures are expected to persist for at least another week, official forecasts say.
As many as 66 rivers in 34 Chongqing counties have dried up, state broadcaster CCTV said Friday.
The Three Gorges Dam and low water level along the Yangtze River in Yichang, China on Tuesday, Aug.23, 2022.
(Bloomberg / Getty Images)
“For the Yangtze,” Cheng said, “part of the problem is that the river goes all the way to the sea near Shanghai. When the river level goes down, you start affecting the draft of the ships that can go up and down. If you start asking for for ships to operate at less than full load, you also begin to affect their ability to move things out of the country in terms of products and even upstream in internal supply chains. ”
Cheng explained that the energy crisis and supply chain problems have been further exacerbated by China’s continued support for the coronavirus blockages, which have further paralyzed the economy.
NANJING, CHINA – AUGUST 23, 2022 – An exposed tidal flat along the Nanjing section of the Yangtze River is pictured in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China, August 23, 2022
(CFOTO / Future Publishing via Getty Images)
China’s central bank announced Monday that it would cut its five-year interest rate by 0.15 percentage points and lower the mortgage benchmark by a larger margin as Beijing increases efforts to revive the economy.
China’s economy, the second largest in the world, narrowly avoided contracting in the second quarter, and a series of data released last week showed the economy unexpectedly slowed in July, prompting some global investment banks. including Goldman Sachs and Nomura, to downgrade their full annual GDP growth forecast for China.
Reuters contributed to this report
