During this summer broadcasting season, provinces such as Henan, Shandong, and Anhui have been hit by high temperatures and droughts, leading to dry and cracked land, dried-up rivers, and even cases of wells being sucked dry and underground water drying up. Water resources expert Wang Weiluo believes that humans should respect nature, otherwise extreme weather events will become more frequent and gradually become the norm.
Villagers from Shandong and Hebei recently informed reporters that there has been very little rain since the Chinese New Year, with just a few sporadic showers. This spring has seen a severe lack of rainfall, forcing them to irrigate using well water.
Mr. Chen from Linyi, Shandong, mentioned that this year has been particularly dry. It hasn’t rained much since March, and their crops have been ruined by the drought. The wheat harvest is less than half usual due to the severe dry conditions. Economic crops such as corn, peaches, peanuts, and sweet potatoes are also suffering. The corn and tobacco they planted this year have dried up due to the extreme drought.
“People are drilling their own wells, trying to get some electricity to pump water, or using electric cars or tractors to draw water from the rivers, but it’s not enough. Because of the severe drought this year, even watering the land with the little water available is not effective.”
In Henan’s Xixian County, Ms. Xu told reporters that the area, close to Hubei, is known for having “half rice and half borders”. It’s the rice planting season, but the large pond in the village has already dried up. After the wheat harvest, a severe drought set in, completely drying up the water in the village pond, causing cracks at the bottom of the pond.
According to reports in Chinese media, many parts of Henan Province have not seen rain for 80 days, leading to dried-up rivers and cracked fields. Farmers are working day and night under temperatures exceeding 40 degrees Celsius to water the land. Some have reported never experiencing such dry conditions in their 50 years. Even wells as deep as 20 meters have run dry, with the groundwater reserves of the past now depleted.
The severe drought in Henan continues to expand, with as of June 12, an estimated 3.23 million mu of farmland in the province unable to be planted due to the drought. Videos show a farmer testing the temperature in the field, with readings hitting an extreme 50 degrees Celsius.
An article from the WeChat public account “Bright Vision” titled “The Drought in Anhui, Henan, Shandong, and Hebei Can’t Make it Trending” indicates that the situation in northern Anhui is no better than in Henan and Shandong. From before the wheat harvest until now, there has been no substantial rain in northern Anhui for months. The land has cracked wide open, and the core section of the Wu River in Bozhou has already dried up. Such scenes have not been seen for decades.
The article mentions that due to the dry conditions, fires in northern Anhui’s wheat fields are more frequent than ever before. Often, while harvesting wheat, the combine harvester catches fire.
In one nearby village, more than 20 acres of wheat were burned, while in another village further away, one to two hundred acres of wheat were affected. Despite a week passing since the Spring Festival, corn and soybeans for the autumn season have not been planted yet. Farmers are tirelessly watering the land day and night to plant the crops as soon as possible.
While the northern regions face high temperatures and drought, the southern regions continue to experience heavy rainfall. One netizen from Guangdong mentioned, “It has been raining continuously for two months here.” The extreme weather conditions of drought in the north and floods in the south have led to questions of humanity’s insignificance in the face of nature. “Drought-stricken areas suffer from droughts, while flood-hit areas face floods. In the past, such severe droughts in the Central Plains would have caused mass migrations.”
Renowned water resources expert Wang Weiluo, in an interview with Da Ji Yuan, stated that China is situated in a subtropical monsoon climate zone where rainfall distribution is not uniform, and not every region experiences favorable weather conditions every year. Especially in recent decades, the frequency of extreme weather events has been on the rise and is gradually becoming a norm.
Wang Weiluo explained that China mainly relies on reservoirs for water supply, but due to fears of dam failure during flood season, the officials in charge of reservoirs, including vice governors, heads of water resources departments, and actual reservoir managers, release water stored in the reservoirs before the flood season starts in June. By June, the reservoirs are emptied of their active storage, leaving them with no water to release even when needed.
“They operate this way every year, but can you control the weather? Maybe this year, there will be more or less rain. With current technology, you cannot predict accurately in the long run whether there will be more or less rain this year or when it will rain. It’s not that precise,” he said.
On June 12, the Chinese Ministry of Water Resources initiated a level IV emergency response for drought defense in Hebei, Shanxi, Jiangsu, Anhui, Shandong, Henan, Shaanxi, and Gansu provinces, requiring “emergency measures such as local emergency water diversion, well drilling, to ensure irrigation water supply and public drinking water safety.”
Mr. Li from Shandong told reporters that due to the unchanged land policies for 30 years, only he among his family of four has land. Despite being married for over ten years and having two children, none of them received any land. So, he rented out his 1.3 mu of land to others for cultivation in greenhouses. Growing grains doesn’t even cover costs for a year; it leads to losses. Many local residents resort to greenhouse farming.
“Twenty or thirty families pool money to drill a deep well, sharing it among themselves, and those near the river use river water for irrigation. A few years ago, we drilled wells to 150 meters, but now we go straight to 180 meters,” he said. “Even the small well in our yard is nearly 40 meters deep.”
In response, Wang Weiluo noted that China’s groundwater resources were originally abundant. However, with the rapid development of agriculture and food production, a large amount of underground water was extracted. In the 1980s and 1990s, there was excessive exploitation of groundwater resources in the Haihe River Basin and the Huaihe River Basin. After tapping the shallow reserves, they dug deeper, resulting in a rapid decline in groundwater levels, leading to the problem of land subsidence. Though some relief has been achieved in recent years through recharge efforts, the groundwater depletion has not been resolved, creating further issues such as groundwater pollution.
He mentioned, “Previously in the North China Plain, the Yangtze River Plain, especially the Huaihe River Plain, the groundwater level was quite high. Even at a depth of two to three meters, there would be water. For example, Jinan is known as the ‘Spring City,’ with almost every household having a well. But now, it’s gone.
“Shandong’s water levels have declined significantly, although not as severely as in Hebei. There’s a place in Shandong called Shouguang, known for greenhouse vegetable farming where the groundwater level is definitely below 100 meters because all vegetable farmers there rely on pumping groundwater for irrigation,” Wang Weiluo explained. The decline in groundwater levels is a widespread issue in China, whereas in Israel, ordinary citizens are not allowed to extract groundwater as it serves as a strategic resource for emergencies.
He emphasized that as the water levels drop drastically, significantly more water is needed for irrigation above. The water usage in Chinese agriculture is alarmingly high, with nearly 400 to 600 cubic meters of water required per mu of farmland. The irrigation techniques in agriculture are comparable to those in the 19th century.
Due to the continuous high temperatures and drought, Shandong, Henan, and other regions have started implementing artificial rainfall methods.
According to reports, on June 12, Mengyin County in Linyi, Shandong experienced hail the size of quail eggs. Several towns in the area saw peaches being smashed due to the hailstones, causing some fruit farmers to incur economic losses of up to 200,000 yuan in less than half an hour.
Mr. Chen confirmed to the reporters that Mengyin is known for peach cultivation, and yesterday (June 12), there was a rainfall that resulted from artificial rainfall measures, around three centimeters, which also brought hail, damaging all the peach trees. “The government brought rain using cannons, but the rainfall wasn’t adequate, and they brought hail instead.”
In response to the intense convective weather in the region, the head of the Linyi Meteorological Observatory publicly clarified that two rounds of artificial hail suppression and artificial rainfall were carried out to alleviate the drought. The maximum precipitation recorded was over 30 millimeters. The drought situation was effectively relieved, with the intervention significantly lessening the severity of the drought.
Wang Weiluo believes that this is a common practice of the Chinese Communist Party. They always claim that without their intervention, people would have been either drowned or killed by drought. The CCP uses artificial rainfall to manipulate the weather, but if not done properly, it can result in adverse effects like turning into heavy rain or forming hail, or no effect at all.
Artificial rainfall involves introducing ice nuclei or condensation nuclei into the clouds through methods such as aircraft or firing cannons. Common seeding agents include dry ice, silver iodide, or sodium chloride to increase the number of nuclei for condensation, accelerating the formation of larger raindrops in the clouds. When there is an excessive amount of seeding agents, it turns into ice, leading to hail formation.
Wang Weiluo noted that while there have been successful cases of artificially influencing weather, there have also been significant failures. Failures can cause either no rainfall or heavy rain. For example, a few years ago in Shenyang, artificial rainfall led to heavy rain, causing flooding and submerging cars in the city. If not measured carefully, mistakes can occur. In Germany, artificial rainfall is not permitted, and if heavy rains lead to the flooding, people ask for compensation.
He added, “The CCP believes that man can conquer nature, and artificial rainfall is one of their means. However, the final outcome of artificial rainfall hasn’t been comprehensively evaluated. If artificial weather manipulation is effective, then there would be no extreme drought in the north or disastrous floods in the south. If we can artificially make it rain, then we can also stop the rain, so there would be no extreme droughts or floods. Can humans really possess such capabilities?”