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RNZ News
3 hours ago
- Climate
- RNZ News
Streets turn to rivers as deadly flooding inundates northern Beijing
By Nectar Gan and Joyce Jiang , CNN Flooding in Miyun district, on the outskirts of Beijing, on 28 July. Photo: Jade Gao/AFP/Getty Images via CNN Newsource Days of torrential rain have killed at least 30 people in the northern outskirts of Beijing, state media reported Tuesday, as China grapples with yet another deadly rainy season marked by extreme downpours, devastating floods and landslides. In recent days, intense rainstorms have battered much of northern China - a densely populated part of the country home to massive metropolises as well as agricultural heartlands. There, residents and their livelihoods have become increasingly vulnerable to worsening summer storms and floods, as well as scorching heatwaves and drought - posing a major challenge to the Chinese government as the climate crisis makes extreme weather more frequent and intense. The pounding rain intensified around the Chinese capital on Monday, killing 28 people in Miyun, an outlying mountainous suburb in the city's northeast home to more than half a million people; another two were killed in Yanqing, also in the city's north, China's state broadcaster CCTV reported. Footage circulating on social media shows brown floodwater sweeping through residential communities, washing away cars, knocking down electricity poles and turning streets into rivers in Miyun. Dozens of roads have been damaged, potentially complicating rescue efforts, and in more than 100 smaller, more rural villages, the downpours have also cut off electricity. More than 80,000 people have been relocated, including about 17,000 in Miyun, according to CCTV. Some residents have described their horror on social media. A woman from a small town in Miyun wrote on Xiaohongshu, China's Instagram, that she spent Monday night filled with "a pervasive sense of fear," as a nearby river overflowed, gushing with trees, vehicles and construction debris. "The place where I grew up was destroyed overnight. I never imagined that such devastation would occur even within the capital, Beijing," she wrote. Firefighters arrived Tuesday morning for rescue, and telecommunication teams were still trying to recover phone signals in the remote area, she said. Some residents are assisting in rescue efforts, using boats and excavators to evacuate those trapped by the floodwater. A local man rescued 17 people with his boat, and another man used his excavator to relocate more than 80 people to safety, a Miyun resident told CCTV. Authorities discharged floodwater from a reservoir in Miyun on Monday after its maximum flood peak flow reached a record high of 6550 cubic meters per second, to make space for incoming torrents, Xinhua reported. Beijing saw an average rainfall of about 166 millimetres during the recent days of heavy downpours, according to state news agency Xinhua - more than the city's average rainfall for the whole month of July. The maximum rainfall was recorded in Miyun, at 543mm, almost equalling Beijing's average annual rainfall. On Monday, Beijing issued its highest-level flood alert, urging residents to stay away from swelling rivers. The city's meteorological observatory also issued a red alert for rainstorms - the highest in a four-tier system, warning of intensifying rain during the night and "extremely high risk" of flash floods, mudslides and landslides in mountainous areas. Authorities have ordered schools, construction sites and scenic spots across the city to be closed, and all rural homestays and campsites to suspend operations. By Tuesday afternoon, the rains had stopped in central Beijing, and floodwaters had begun to subside in its outskirts. The heavy rainfall and the accompanying floods and geological disasters have caused "significant casualties and property losses" in Beijing and the northern provinces of Hebei, Jilin and Shandong, Chinese leader Xi Jinping said on Monday, according to CCTV. Xi instructed officials to make "all-out effort" to search and rescue those still missing, properly evacuate resettle residents at risk and minimize casualties to the greatest extent possible. David Perdue, the newly appointed US ambassador to China, offered his condolences to the victims. "I was very sorry to hear about the loss of life in China, including Beijing, due to the heavy rains. We offer our sincere condolences to those who have lost family members and loved ones," he wrote on social platform X. The deadly rains and floods came just two years after the Chinese capital was pounded by record rains that killed 33 people. In 2023, Beijing was struck by its heaviest rainfall in 140 years, which unleashed severe flash floods in its mountainous western outskirts. Many provinces in northern China have reported deaths caused by the heavy rainfall. In Hebei province, which surrounds Beijing, a landslide killed four people and left another eight missing, state media reported Monday. In neighbouring Shanxi province, a bus carrying 14 people went missing near a village in the small hours of Sunday. Authorities found the body of a passenger downstream and were still searching for the others, Xinhua reported. In the coastal province of Shandong, flash floods destroyed 19 houses in foothill villages last week, killing two people and leaving 10 more missing, after half a year's worth of rain fell in five hours overnight. In Hebei, some residents trapped by floods and landslides have called for help on social media. A woman from Yangjiatai, a mountainous village in Chengde city, Hebei province, near Miyun, told CNN her village has been hit by flooding and a landslide, which collapsed houses, cut off roads and knocked out electricity and signal. She had made her way out of the village to call for help. "Most people haven't been evacuated - only a few individuals are able to come out to communicate with the outside world and bring back some supplies," she said. - CNN
RNZ News
10-07-2025
- Health
- RNZ News
More than 200 children found with high lead levels after kindergarten in China uses paint as food colouring, authorities say
File photo. Photo: Photo / 123RF By Simone McCarthy and Joyce Jiang , CNN More than 200 kindergarten students in northwestern China were found to have abnormal blood lead levels after kitchen staff used paint as food colouring, authorities said, in a case that's stoked outrage in a country long plagued by food safety scandals. Eight people, including the principal of the private kindergarten that the children attended, have been detained "on suspicion of producing toxic and harmful food," according to a report released Tuesday by Tianshui city government, as cited by Chinese state broadcaster CCTV. The principal and a financial backer of the school had allowed kitchen staff at the Heshi Peixin Kindergarten to use paint pigments to colour the children's food, leading to contamination, according to the report, which followed a days-long but ongoing probe into the cases. Of the 251 students enrolled at the kindergarten, 233 were found to have abnormal levels of lead in their blood, the report found. The children were undergoing medical treatment with 201 of them currently in hospital, authorities said. Medical evaluation on the effects of their exposure, which can cause long-term and developmental harm, were not yet made public. Local media cited a paediatrics professor as saying aspects of the case suggest there could be chronic lead poisoning, meaning exposure over a period of more than three months. During the investigation, two food samples from the kindergarten - a red date steamed breakfast cake and a sausage corn roll - were found to have lead levels more than 2,000 times the national food safety standard for contamination, according to figures cited in the investigation report. The paint was also seized by authorities and found to contain lead - and the packaging was clearly labelled as non-edible, the report said. Tianshui's top law enforcement official told CCTV that the principal and his investor had aimed to "attract more enrolment and increase revenue" with the colourful food. CNN has reached out to Heshi Peixin Kindergarten several times for comment. Authorities said they launched the probe on 1 July after becoming aware of reports that children at the school had abnormal blood lead levels. Lead exposure in children can lead to severe consequences, including impacting children's brain development, behaviour and IQ. The government report did not disclose how long the exposure had gone on, with some affected parents interviewed by state media saying they had noticed abnormal signs in their children's health and behaviour for months - and clamoring for more answers about how the exposure happened. "My mind went blank," a mother of one affected student told state media after learning from a hospital in another city that her child had a blood lead level of 528 micrograms per litre - a revelation that came after she said a local department in Tianshui told her the blood levels were normal, according to a report published by outlet China National Radio (CNR). China's National Health Agency classifies "severe lead poisoning" as anything above 450 micrograms per litre. The case has raised all-too-familiar concerns in China about food safety as well as the levels of transparency with which such cases are handled - especially in a system where independent journalism is tightly controlled and officials are under pressure to resolve issues quickly. Earlier this month, after the school conducted tests on the students but did not issue individual results, many parents took their children to Xi'an - a major city a roughly four-hour drive from Tianshui - for testing, according to a report published by a news outlet affiliated with the official People's Daily. "Right now, I'm not thinking about compensation - I just want my child to be healthy," she was quoted as saying. Reports from state-affiliated media found that 70 children who were tested in Xi'an had blood lead levels surpassing the threshold of lead poisoning, with six of those cases exceeding 450 micrograms per liter. According to China's official guidelines, this level is classified as "severe". A full picture of the results from all the students with abnormal levels was not publicly available. One mother told the People's Daily-affiliated outlet that she had been confused by her daughter's constant stomach aches, loss of appetite and behavioural changes over the past six months, which didn't improve after treating her with traditional Chinese medicine. Others expressed skepticism about the results of the official investigation. "The children only eat three-colour jujube steamed cake and corn sausage rolls once or twice a week, how could they be poisoned so seriously?" one mother, who gave her surname Wu, told CNR. "If something like this happened to the children in school, at least give us an explanation. Now there is nothing." Earlier this week, Tianshui's mayor Liu Lijiang said the city would "do everything possible to ensure the children's treatment, rehabilitation and follow-up protection," while vowing to close "loopholes" in Tianshui's public food safety supervision. The case has led to widespread expressions of outrage across Chinese social media, the latest among dozens of high-profile scandals have been reported by local media since the early 2000s. "Serious accountability must be maintained and food safety issues cannot be ignored or slacked off. When it involves the life safety of young children, severe punishment must be imposed," wrote one commentator on the X-like platform Weibo. "Children are the hope of a family. I hope they can recover soon and grow up healthily," said another. Past scandals have also impacted children. In one of the most egregious examples, six infants died and some 300,000 others were sickened by milk powder formula containing the toxic industrial chemical melamine. Several executives found to be responsible for the 2008 case were ultimately handed death sentences, and the tragedy drove deep mistrust of domestic products and food safety in China. Lead poisoning used to be a more widespread issue in China. In 2010, the central government for the first time allocated special funds for heavy metal pollution prevention in response to at least 12 high-profile cases the previous year that left more than 4,000 people with elevated blood lead levels, according to state media. Officials have also moved to tighten food safety regulations in recent years, but pervasive cases have shown more needs to be done in terms of enforcement and to build back public trust, experts say. Improving the food regulatory system calls for "more transparency, more thorough investigation of food safety cases," said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York and author of the book Toxic Politics: China's Environmental Health Crisis and its Challenge to the Chinese State. Huang also said a lack of public confidence in the safety systems could evolve into a "trust crisis". - CNN
