China has launched its biggest relocation programme since the Three Gorges Dam, with 330,000 residents set to be moved to new homes to make way for a water project that will serve thirsty Beijing.

Rescuers in three countries across Asia struggled to reach survivors from massive flooding that afflicted millions of people, as the death toll climbed in a remote Chinese town where hundreds died and more than 1,100 were missing from landslides.

More than 1,000 people have died or disappeared in severe flooding in China so far this year, and the heaviest rains are still to come, a senior official warned today.

Unusually heavy seasonal flooding in China has killed at least 155 people and forced more than 1 million to flee as water levels in some areas reached their highest for more than a decade, the government said today.

Plans to raise the water level behind China’s massive Three Gorges dam to full capacity this month, which would mark the symbolic culmination of the decades-old project, have stalled amid a worsening drought and reports of increased landslide risks.

China’s environment ministry has suspended construction of two ambitious hydropower dams in the upper Yangtze River region, saying the projects were illegal because they were started without necessary environmental assessments.

China plans to build more than 20 dams along the country’s longest river by 2020, it announced today.

Thousands of troops are tonight fighting to plug dangerous cracks in a dam above an earthquake-hit Chinese town.

China today denied reports of deadly landslides being triggered by a massive dam project which has been repeatedly attacked as an environmental disaster.

HOW could you not fall in love with a country like China that labours massively to make foreign visitors welcome after centuries of isolation?

THE Little Emperors, they call them, and they can be counted in tens of millions. They are the young generation of China, and the main reason why that country will surely become the next and perhaps the greatest superpower in the world.

A Chinese freshwater dolphin has been declared extinct after desperate efforts to rescue it came too late.

China has stationed anti-terror troops equipped with helicopters, tanks and bomb disposal robots to defend the massive Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River against terror attacks.

Rain-soaked residents of south-western China began digging out today after floods and landslides that killed at least 161 people, while authorities warned of further rains over parts of the disaster area.

CHINA is by a large margin the fastest-growing major international economy. Its economic success has translated into a decent stock market performance in its own exchanges but finding a “play” on that can be problematic. Irish investors are naturally reluctant to invest their money in the Shenzen or Shanghai stock exchanges, as these territories are wholly unfamiliar.

CHINESE authorities have evacuated 600,000 people from around the dangerously swollen Dongting Lake as it threatens to engulf millions more, state media said yesterday.