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political and economic rewards”, he wrote in People’s Tribune, an offi cial magazine. A broader concern for China is that America and its allies are getting better at coordinating eff orts to counterbalance Chinese economic and military heft. The g7’s plan was launched two days before the 30 members of nato agreed at a summit to include threats posed by China in a blue print for its future strategy. The summit was also attended for the fi rst time by the leaders of Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. A few days earlier, Amer ica and four of its closest allies launched yet another initiative, the Partners in the Blue Pacifi c pact, aimed at off setting Chi nese infl uence in the Pacifi c islands. In public, China has been dismissive of such eff orts. “What the international com munity wants to see is real money and pro jects that actually benefi t the people,” said Zhao Lijian, a spokesman, after the pgii was launched. Privately, though, some Chinese experts worry that such Western eff orts are gaining pace just as China’s im age has been tarnished by its zerocovid strategy and support for Russia in Ukraine. Yet there are reasons to be sceptical of the g7’s plan, too. It is a repackaging of an idea called Build Back Better World that was launched at the group’s summit last year. The rebranding was partly due to Mr Biden’s failure to win congressional sup port for his domestic Build Back Better ini tiative, Western offi cials say. But they also concede that there was little progress in implementing the international plan. The g7’s plan has roots, too, in an even earlier initiative, the Blue Dot Network, which was started by America, Japan and Australia in 2019 but has made little head way, in part because of diff erences over cli mate change. There are also overlaps with the eu’s Global Gateway scheme, launched in December to “mobilise” €300bn ($340bn) in infrastructure investment by 2027, and Britain’s Clean Green Initiative, unveiled a month earlier with a pledge of £3bn ($4.1bn) for sustainable infrastruc ture in developing countries. Western offi cials say these eff orts are complementary. But some observers see a lack of new money on off er. They worry that infl ation and domestic politics will limit state funding, and the private sector will be wary of investing in unstable coun tries. “One has to wonder if this isn’t all just too little, too late,” said Matt Ferchen of the Leiden Asia Centre in the Netherlands. In one indication of how the g7 will try to meet its $600bn goal, the White House listed several ongoing projects that were retroactively included. China did the same when it launched the bri. But the g7 will need to show more substantial results fast if it is to convince developing countries that it off ers a better alternative to China’s new Silk Road, rather than a dead end. n
The Economist July 9th 2022
Floods
Above the water line YINGD E
Improved planning means fewer people are dying from floods
A
s the waters submerged her village’s ancestral shrine, Yu Jingyu and her family put their chickens upstairs and fl ed to the upper fl oor of their neighbour’s tall er house. In the bambooclad hills of Yingde, in the southern province of Guang dong, locals say these are the worst fl oods they have ever seen. The nearby river has risen to its highest level since records be gan in 1951. “Everything is gone,” says Ms Yu, cradling her baby. Yet there have been no reported deaths in Yingde in June and July, despite the se verity of the fl ooding. This is telling. Be tween 1990 and 1999, there were more than 1,000 deaths across China from fl ooding and landslides every year and, in three of those years, more than 3,000. Since 2011 the toll has topped 1,000 only twice. Data are imperfect and the government tries to hide its failures. But experts agree that the downward trend in deaths from fl ooding is clear, even though overall levels of precip itation have remained steady and, for the past three years at least, there have been more “intense rain events”. There are a few reasons for this. First, the Communist Party has spent lavishly to respond to emergencies, especially since a devastating earthquake in 2008, says Scott Moore of the University of Pennsylvania. “Highprofi le disasters were perceived as being signifi cant challenges to the Party’s ability to protect the people, which of course it claims to do,” he says. Political pressure means disaster response has be
Everywhere
come one of the few areas where govern ment departments work well together, he says. Rescue eff orts by heroic offi cials and soldiers also provide good propaganda. The government has got much better at moving people to safety. In 2020’s rainy season, 4.7m people were evacuated from fl oods, nearly 50% more than the average of the previous fi ve years. More accurate weather forecasts and fast communica tions are crucial. Villagers in Yingde were warned on WeChat, a ubiquitous messag ing app, that a fl ood was coming and they should be ready to fl ee. The thousands of dams and dykes built over the past few decades are also lifesav ers. So many of them block China’s big riv ers that offi cials are running out of good sites to build new ones. The infrastructure came with huge costs in concrete, forced resettlement and damage to the environ ment. But offi cials can now protect big cit ies by holding fl oodwaters upstream and staggering their release. Not everyone benefi ts. “The logic is to protect more pop ulated regions,” says Ma Jun, an environ mentalist. “But this may induce a cost up stream.” In Yingde some grumbled that their villages were used as a reservoir to protect Guangzhou, a city downriver. Despite lower death tolls, China’s age old battle against fl oods is likely to get harder as extreme weather becomes more common. China is “probably the most ex posed of any large country or economy” to climate risks, says Mr Moore. For one thing, river dams do not protect against rising sea levels. More investment in building sea walls will be needed, he says. Upstream dams do not help much if enough rain falls directly on cities, over whelming storm drains and sewers. Mak ing cities more absorbent with parks and wetlands can help. China has invested bil lions of yuan in creating such “sponge cit ies”. But even these struggle to cope if rains are too intense, says Faith Chan of the Uni versity of Nottingham in Ningbo. Floods that killed around 400 last year in Zheng zhou, a showcase sponge city, came after a year’s worth of rain fell in three days. And although China has reduced deaths from rising waters, it is poorly prepared for the economic damage that they bring. Floods in 2021 caused $23bn in losses, sec ond only to Europe. Only 10% of those loss es were insured, according to estimates by Swiss Re, a reinsurance fi rm. In Europe, in contrast, 32% of losses from fl oods were insured last year. Ms Yu and others in Yingde say the fl oods have cost them tens of thousands of yuan. Most make around 3,000 yuan ($440) a month and few have insurance. What they do possess is the stoicism of the ages in the face of tragedy. “If there’s rice we’ll eat rice,” says one. “And if there’s just porridge, then we’ll eat porridge.” n
