Natural disasters cost China $13 billion in January-June

By Liz Lee

BEIJING (Reuters) -Natural disasters such as flooding, drought and extreme temperatures cost China 93.16 billion yuan ($12.83 billion) in the first half of this year, with almost 33 million people affected, the government said on Friday.

Heavy snow, 22 strong earthquakes including one of 7.1 magnitude in the northwestern region of Xinjiang, landslides and mudslides in southwestern regions and flooding on the Yellow River and in southern provinces all added to the burden.

The 32.38 million people affected included 322 who died or disappeared, the ministry told a news briefing. About 856,000 people faced emergency resettlement, 23,000 houses were destroyed, and around 3.17 million hectares of crops damaged.

The number of people impacted compares with just 48.76 million people for the whole of 2023, when 95 people died or went missing, according to the ministry's report from last year.

The impact on the economy in January-June this year was also worse than the year-earlier period, when the country logged 38.23 billion yuan worth of loss. It was the biggest first-half disaster-related loss since 2019, according to data available on the Emergency Management Ministry website.

China has seen larger swings in temperature breaking historical records in recent years while precipitation - rain or snow - has grown more erratic, signs that point to the impact of climate change on the country's weather.

Funds channelled into disaster management have reached 4.17 billion yuan so far this year, according to a Reuters tally, with 546 million yuan allocated last month for agricultural production and disaster relief.

Long durations of icy weather and intense snow in the winter months severely disrupted people and their livelihoods, ministry spokesperson Shen Zhanli said.

Parts of southern China such as the Guangxi region, Guangdong and Fujian provinces were hit hard by frequent and extreme rains as the annual rainy season began earlier than usual. Dozens have died from floods or rain-induced landslides.

Around the same time, droughts developed quite quickly and covered large areas in the north and around the North China Plain, impacting local agricultural production. At the peak, some 6.2 million hectares of farmland faced moisture shortages compared with the average 2.67 million hectares in other years.

But losses were capped as many of the affected areas had better irrigation and water storage systems, the ministry said.

The drought season afflicted some 1.29 million people in 10 northern provinces, resulting in an economic loss of 1.46 billion yuan - lower than the average for the same period.

With the summer flood season approaching, all kinds of risks have increased significantly, the ministry said, emphasising the need for a greater sense of responsibility and urgency over safety, disaster prevention and mitigation as well as relief work.

(Reporting by Liz Lee and Albee Zhang; Editing by Christopher Cushing, Sherry Jacob-Phillips, Philippa Fletcher)