China evacuates 900,000 after heavy flooding

HEAVY rains and mudslides have killed at least 131 people across China’s densely populated southeast and forced the evacuation of more than 900,000 from flooding that was the worst in a century in some places.

Meteorologists have warned of more “torrential rains” in the south over the next few days.

At least 81 people were killed in the latest rain and landslides across an area stretching from Guangxi on China’s southern coast through Guangdong province to Fujian province in the southeast, the government said.

Guangdong, bordering Hong Kong, is the heart of China’s export-oriented manufacturing industries and its most populous province, with more than 100 million people.

The latest fatalities raised the death toll in the south to at least 131 and the nationwide toll in China’s three-week-old flooding season to at least 248.

China suffers hundreds of flooding deaths every summer in its south and northeast. The impact of seasonal rains is magnified by environmental damage from decades of intensive farming and tree-cutting that have left denuded hillsides unable to trap rain. Millions of people live in vulnerable areas on reclaimed former flood plains.

In parts of Guangxi, the flooding was the worst in a century, while the inundation along the Min River in Fujian was the most severe in two decades.