Breached Dams, Cut-Off Communities, Ruined Fields

Foodthink says

Rescue operations in Guangxi’s flood-hit regions are ongoing. In Hengzhou, Nanning—the epicentre of the disaster—floodwaters have swept through jasmine, rice, sugarcane and banana plantations, as well as aquaculture and pig farming. Yet, just over the past two years, Heng County was strengthening its agricultural irrigation infrastructure, and fuelled by the surge in the new-style tea drink market, many farmers expanded their jasmine crops, compounding today’s devastating losses. Unprecedented disasters are becoming routine, with climate change explicitly incorporated into the state’s 2026 Central Document No. 1. How to transition from conventional flood control to building resilience, what risks can be mitigated and which cannot, and how both rural and urban communities can adopt more effective strategies—all demand clear answers.

The rain is too heavy!

Can the reservoirs hold?

On the morning of 6 July, Zhong Luyan, a resident of Zhongtuan Village in Hengzhou, Nanning, received a broadcast warning from the village. She watched as village committee members knocked on doors one by one, notifying residents that a nearby reservoir was about to open its sluice gates to release water and urging them to stay safe. Assessing that the reservoirs near the village had limited capacity and that her house and fields were situated higher up on the hillside, Zhong judged the location relatively safe and decided to stay home to monitor the situation. Soon after, she heard news of a dam breach at the Lülan Reservoir, more than ten kilometres away. Just five kilometres from the Lülan Reservoir and also situated in the upper reaches of the Yu River, the Yunbiao Reservoir experienced simultaneous overtopping.

◉Reservoirs in the Yu River basin, a tributary of the Xijiang, that are facing critical conditions. The Lülan and Yunbiao Reservoirs discharge into the Yu River via the Zhenlong and Yunbiao Rivers, respectively. Both rivers originate in Zhenlong Mountain, the area that recorded the heaviest rainfall during this event. Furthermore, floodwaters from the Dongban River and the Shidiao River, as well as the Huanglian and Liyu Rivers, converged into the Yu River from the west and east. Image source: Foodthink

Zhong Luyan was ‘lucky’: the reservoir’s flood discharge did not reach her jasmine fields on the hillside, leaving only a small patch of field ridges inundated. By contrast, many other Hengzhou farmers we attempted to contact were unreachable due to signal disruptions.Online rescue appeals indicated that Zhenlong Township in Hengzhou City was completely cut off, with signal not yet restored by the morning of 9 July.

In Dahe and Bei villages, situated further from the breached dam, residents’ homes were temporarily spared, but floodwaters reached depths of up to three metres. The fields and rice paddies of over a thousand households—covering nearly 667 hectares—were left completely submerged.

Since 3 July, influenced by Typhoon Maysak, the tenth typhoon of the year, Guangxi has endured historically rare, widespread and prolonged heavy rainfall, with torrential rain impacting more than 77 per cent of townships across the region. According to the Xinhua News Agency, by 11:00 on the morning of 9 July, a total of 64,500 residents in Nanning City had been evacuated and relocated, comprising 54,500 from Hengzhou City and 9,321 from Binyang County. Across the wider region, 375,000 people were affected, with 39 confirmed fatalities and nine missing. Agricultural damage covered an area of 12,900 hectares.

The most striking incident during the deluge was the breach of the Lülan Reservoir dam on the morning of the 6th.

Situated on the Yunbiao River, a tributary of the Yu River, the Lülan Reservoir lies in Lülan Village, Xiaoyi Town. It is the largest medium-sized reservoir in Hengzhou City, providing irrigation and domestic water supplies to 170,000 residents across 46 administrative villages in four townships. The facility reliably irrigates approximately 10,487 hectares of farmland and serves as a vital backup water source for Hengzhou’s urban area. Public records indicate the reservoir underwent systematic renovations in both 2009 and 2023, with media investigations revealing cumulative investment exceeding 400 million yuan.

But at 10 a. m. that day, the dam suddenly ruptured, tearing open a 50-metre breach as floodwaters surged straight into downstream villages and large tracts of farmland. Settlements were instantly engulfed by murky floodwaters several metres deep. The ground and first floors of numerous homes were completely submerged, while roads, power, and communications were widely severed. Many villages became isolated islands cut off by the water, losing all contact with the outside world. A local villager interviewed by Phoenix News said: What was most terrifying was that even after the floodwaters were released, the levels still hadn’t receded.

At 11:30, Nanning upgraded its flood emergency response from Level III to Level I.

Hao Nan, founder of Zhuoming Credit Support, analysed the situation and identified the sheer volume and relentless persistence of the extreme rainfall across Guangxi as the key drivers behind the escalating disaster. He drew a comparison to the unforgettable 20 July floods in Zhengzhou, Henan, where stable weather conditions gave way to a sudden, intense downpour over a short period. In contrast, during this Guangxi crisis, prolonged heavy rain beforehand had already saturated the soil and pushed river systems to their carrying capacity. Just as water management infrastructure was nearing its breaking point, the final few hours brought another wave of even more extreme rainfall. “This kind of rain is the most devastating,” he said. “It’s like taking a severe beating in the boxing ring; you’re already staggering, barely able to keep your balance, when suddenly you get hit by a few heavy hooks.”

Analysis indicates that the typhoon followed an unusual track, and the heavy rain persisted relentlessly after landfall. According to official data, within the 24-hour period from 08:00 on 5 July to 08:00 on 6 July, southern and eastern Guangxi experienced heavy to extreme rainstorms. Rainfall exceeded 400 mm across eight counties and districts, including Binyang County in Nanning, Qinnan District in Qinzhou, and Qintang District in Guigang. Luwei Town in Binyang County recorded the highest accumulation, reaching 713.3 mm.

◉ Daily rainfall map for the Guangxi region (08:00, 5 July 2026 – 08:00, 6 July 2026). Source: Meteorological Bureau of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region

The Pearl River Commission reported that since 4 July, in just two days, 77 rivers across the Pearl River Basin – including the main Xijiang River and tributaries such as the Liu, Yu, and Gui – have seen floodwaters exceed warning levels. Within a single day alone, 40 small and medium-sized rivers surpassed their highest recorded flood levels.

Driven by the persistent rainfall, by 9 July at least 12 reservoirs across Hengzhou and the surrounding region were facing emergencies, including ‘overtopping’—where floodwaters exceed the ‘design flood level’ at which a structure can reliably deliver flood protection—as well as partial breaches and collapses. Beyond the nine reservoirs reported in the evening of 7 July across Nanning and Guigang, including Lülan and Yunbiao Reservoirs, emergency discharge warnings were also issued for the Sancha and Niangshan Reservoirs and Wangtian Pond near Hengzhou, leaving downstream areas severely inundated.

Hao Nan explains that a reservoir’s ‘design flood level’ serves as a critical safety threshold. If distress develops while water levels remain within this limit, the issue typically stems from the structure’s own construction quality. However, once the water breaches the threshold and surpasses the facility’s engineered capacity, the design’s safety guarantees are no longer applicable.

“We used to rely on a network of reservoirs to cope with floods of a 100-year return period, but that standard of protection is no longer adequate. What was once a “100-year” event could now occur every five to ten years. Extreme precipitation thresholds will be surpassed – not just here, but in other regions too.” Hao Nan declared.

So what is to be done? A remark from a hydraulic engineer particularly resonated with him: “We must shift from a mindset of “it must not flood” (or “we dare not allow it to flood”) to one of “we are not afraid of flooding”.”

“Small floods are managed by humans, large floods must be left to water,” another senior hydraulic expert told Foodthink, outlining the approach to floods exceeding design standards: when extreme rainfall triggers such events, inundation is inevitable. However, risk management can be strengthened through a series of measures aimed at “enhancing the resilience of disaster-bearing systems”, including bolstering the capacity to withstand impacts, rapidly restore and rebuild, and adapt to changing conditions.

He went on to say that currently, the water management sector’s approach to flood hazards is primarily centred on ‘flood control’, yet risk prevention and resilience-building measures fall outside its remit. When it comes to adapting to climate change, water authorities have “a great deal more work to do.”

Agricultural irrigation systems

Built at great expense, now battered by catastrophe

Climate resilience must now be factored into not only water conservancy infrastructure, but agricultural irrigation systems as well. The flooding, triggered by extreme rainfall, has devastated not only villages and farming households, but also the agricultural sector in Hengzhou built around the Lülan irrigation area.

When Foodthink called, Liang Dong, a villager from Beicun, Hengzhou Town, Hengzhou City, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, had just finished his daily patrols and was finally sitting down to dinner. On 5 July, the day severe waterlogging struck Guangxi, he went entirely without sleep, spending the night helping to evacuate injured villagers.

Water in the low-lying areas around Liang Dong’s home reached depths of more than three metres, flooding into the houses of many villagers. In Beicun, where he lives, two hamlets were affected by the floods, with over 100 homes and more than 2,000 residents impacted. The village’s primary crops—over 400 hectares of jasmine and more than 130 hectares of rice—were completely submerged. Liang Dong’s own fields were among them.

◉ Jasmine fields submerged by floodwaters, photographed by a resident of Zhaoyang Dading in Hengzhou Town on 6 July. Image source: Southern Metropolis Daily

At the end of 2023, construction began on the modernisation of the Lülan Irrigation District, a project backed by a total investment of 382 million yuan. In the spring of 2025, Hengzhou was hit by a severe drought. During this period, reservoir water levels fell sharply, leaving vast stretches of jasmine fields short of water and reducing bud yields. To safeguard the region’s vital jasmine industry, local authorities expedited construction. Numerous lined canal sections were progressively brought into service at the end of 2024 and throughout 2025.

The project’s primary focus was to harden 60 kilometres of main and branch canals along its entire route and straighten the waterways to minimise water loss during irrigation, ensuring that reservoir water could reach the flower fields rapidly during the dry season. According to official approval documents for the renovation, the irrigation district’s accompanying drainage ditches were designed to a standard for light rainfall with a five-year return period, capable only of meeting routine field drainage needs. The renovation focused exclusively on agricultural irrigation requirements and lacked any supporting flood retention or diversion infrastructure to handle extreme major floods.

“There’s nothing we can do. It’s all one vast sheet of water. I’m so disheartened—such fine jasmine, completely drowned,” Liang Dong said. “The plants might still be saved if left submerged at that depth for a week. But go beyond that, and it’s a lost cause. Once the roots rot, the entire plant will die.”

Jasmine is a perennial shrub that, with proper care, can be continuously harvested for more than ten years. If the plants die, everything must be started from scratch next year.

For now, his sole focus is on disaster recovery. Unsure of what he will do once the waters recede, he asks, “Once the crisis passes, what will I even do?”

The jasmine crop spanning around 0.4 hectares, cultivated by village committee member Xie Shunxiong in Dahe Village, Hengzhou Town, was also almost entirely destroyed. From 4 July, heavy rain lashed the village continuously for two full days and nights. Water levels reached two to three metres and had still not receded by the night of 9 July.

Dahe Village lies close to the Yu River. By the time the floodwaters surged down the river channel into the village, their force had already diminished, sparing the area from becoming the hardest hit. While residents’ homes were largely kept dry, the jasmine fields in the low-lying zones were almost entirely overrun.

In the flat, low-lying flower fields along the Yu River, the floods triggered a backwater effect. Water that should normally drain into the Yu River could not flow out, as the river’s water level sat higher than the drainage outlets. Unable to drain, the water even began to flow backwards, leaving it to stagnate in the fields. Xie Shunxiong had little choice but to organise the villagers to deploy water pumps, but the effort was largely ineffective; the extracted water still had nowhere to go. With the rain still falling, all they could do was wait for it to stop.

The double-petal jasmine cultivated by Xie Shunxiong enjoys a relatively long flowering season, with peak blooms in May–June and August–September. Should the water recede swiftly and the plants survive, the jasmine could push new shoots in a little over a month, potentially allowing them to salvage the next blooming period. If the root systems perish, however, they would be forced to leave the village, either travelling to nearby unaffected orchards to harvest papaya sap or taking on casual labour in Guangdong factories.

Judging by past market rates, a single mu (roughly 0.067 hectares) of jasmine fields would typically yield Xie Shunxiong an annual income of 30,000 yuan. From this deluge, he estimates his losses at nearly 100,000 yuan. Across Dahe Village’s 1,500 households and 6,700 residents, he says the average loss per household stands at around 80,000 yuan.

“After the disaster, we will do our utmost to secure subsidy policies,” Xie Shunxiong says. “You must put forward this recommendation: please provide subsidies for the farmers.”

In his capacity as a village committee member, Xie Shunxiong has spent these past few days surveying the damage every early morning. He records flood losses among households on minimum living allowances and those without family support, inspects bridges and roads for damage, and often goes without a proper meal until eight or nine o’clock in the evening.

When the conversation turned to the village, he paused for a long while. “The scene was harrowing. Even now, it sits heavily on my conscience. Over 6,000 people in our village were caught in the floods. I feel deeply ashamed.” Xie Shunxiong said, then fell silent and hung up.

◉At 8:27 pm on 9 July, the “Kuaizhiqiu (Quick Rescue)” mutual-aid map mini-program was densely packed with rescue requests across the Nanning–Guigang area. Image credit: Interviewee

The Final Blow for Jasmine Farmers

Zhongtuan Village resident Zhong Luyan runs a jasmine ecological farm. Over the past two or three years, she has found the weather in Hengzhou increasingly strange, a shift she felt most acutely last year. “It always feels like there are more typhoons now, hitting with such frequency. The heavy rain lasts so much longer, too. It’s nothing like the natural weather we used to have,” she said. Last April, she witnessed something akin to a “sandstorm” – a phenomenon never before seen in Hengzhou. Fierce winds swept across the fields, churning the air into a thick, grey haze.

“In the past, when it got hot in the summer, a shower would clear in ten or twenty minutes. Once the sun came out, we could harvest the flowers straight away. Things are very different now. As soon as a typhoon hits, we can’t gather or pick the flowers for days,” she said.

Foodthink consulted agricultural insurance experts and found that coverage linked to the jasmine industry primarily takes two forms: the jasmine rainfall index insurance and the jasmine planting income insurance. The rainfall index policy covers the flowering season from late April to late October each year, with claims triggered only when cumulative rainy days during that period exceed 95. The planting income insurance provides compensation if the actual total income per hectare across the entire flowering season falls below the target income stipulated in the policy.

The recent bout of concentrated heavy rainfall and subsequent flooding in Guangxi did not, by strict definition, meet the meteorological thresholds for rainfall index insurance payouts. Meanwhile, the first jasmine planting income insurance policy was only implemented in March this year, covering a pilot plot of just 0.67 hectares, meaning it remains in the small-scale trial phase.

Several growers told Foodthink they were unaware of insurance products related to the jasmine industry and had never purchased any.

Yi Fujin, a professor at Zhejiang University’s School of Public Affairs with extensive research into agricultural policy and risk management, noted: “Agricultural insurance relies heavily on the specifics of each contract; it is not designed to cover every conceivable risk. If all risks were to be included, premiums would inevitably be prohibitively high.” He also stressed that attention must be paid to how local governments liaise with insurers following a disaster.

Against an industry backdrop of overcapacity and prolonged low prices from the previous year, flooding that struck during the peak blossom season compounded the hardship for jasmine growers in Hengzhou.

Xie Shunxiong has been cultivating jasmine for more than 30 years. In those days, jasmine was a key agricultural focus in Hengzhou. Tea merchants from Fujian would ship their tea leaves to the region for local processing and scenting the tea with jasmine flowers. Beyond that, Hengzhou’s jasmine was also sold to other provinces for use in potted plants, essential oils, and fragrances.

Between 2023 and 2024, the new-style tea drink industry underwent rapid expansion, and a surge in products centred on jasmine tea bases directly drove up the price of fresh jasmine flowers in Hengzhou. Liang Dong told Foodthink that around 2023, flower prices suddenly jumped to over 40 yuan a jin (0.5 kg). Each household could pick a maximum of 35–40 kg (70–80 jin) per day, and a minimum of 10–15 kg (20–30 jin).

In Dahe Village, where Xie Shunxiong resides, annual household income ranges from over 30,000 yuan at the lowest to more than 100,000 yuan at the highest. “Jasmine yields are substantial; as long as the price stays above 10 yuan a jin, farmers will not suffer significant losses. Rice fetches only 3 yuan a jin, yet one jin of jasmine is worth three jin of rice.”

Such lucrative flower prices drew many farmers into the sector. They leased fields previously devoted to sugarcane and watermelons to switch to jasmine, hoping to ride the wave. Liang Dong too had considered expanding his plot, but those truly capable of leasing land and scaling up rapidly tend to be better-capitalised major growers. Official statistics show Hengzhou’s jasmine cultivation area reached 129,900 mu (approximately 8,660 hectares) in 2024, with a total fresh flower yield of 109,200 tonnes. By 2025, city promotional figures indicated the area had expanded to 180,000 mu (12,000 hectares), producing 130,000 tonnes of fresh flowers annually.

A specialised labour market for jasmine harvesting has also emerged in Hengzhou. During the annual flowering season, large numbers of seasonal pickers from Guizhou, Yunnan and elsewhere travel to Hengzhou. Renting rooms across various villages, they join local workers to tackle the intense pace of fresh flower harvesting.

“Planting has become excessive, exceeding market demand. Tea merchants have also struggled to sell their stock over the past couple of years,” Liang Dong noted. From 2025 onwards, jasmine prices started to slide. Having averaged more than 20 yuan a jin over the preceding two years, prices fell to around 10 yuan a jin by early this year, dipping to 5 or 6 yuan a jin during rainy periods.

With flower prices in the first half of 2026 failing to rebound to their 2024 highs, the floods disrupted the jasmine growers’ most critical revenue cycle of the year.

Beyond jasmine, wider crop devastation

The agricultural damage within the flood’s path extended far beyond jasmine cultivation.

Large swathes of local staple crops, including rice and maize, were submerged, and newly sown late-season rice seedlings were swept away by the floodwaters. Sugarcane, a key sugar crop in Guangxi, suffered widespread lodging, with roots rotting from prolonged inundation. Guangxi’s bananas, currently at the peak budding stage, were also flattened and waterlogged. The video account ‘A Bao Talks Agriculture’ estimates that more than 667 hectares of banana trees were destroyed across Guangxi.

◉ Bananas flattened across contiguous fields. Image source: ‘A Bao Talks Agriculture’

Snake farming is another distinctive local sector in Hengzhou aimed at boosting agricultural incomes, with peak annual output reaching hundreds of millions of yuan. During these floods, approximately 800 to 900 snakes escaped from a facility in Dengxu Village, Yunbiao Town, Hengzhou City. Snake farms across several areas were heavily inundated, leaving most of the farmed snakes to drown in their rearing sheds. Several pig farms were also struck by the floodwaters; at one operation in Yunbiao Town, 16,000 pigs were completely washed away. At a cattle shed in Hengzhou, 19 cows were drowned, resulting in losses of around 200,000 yuan for the individual farmer.

Aquaculture also sustained losses.

The road into Liangshan Village in Wutang Town, Nanning, remained impassable until the afternoon of 6 July. When villager Qing Shoubai finally made it in, he was met with utter devastation. Thick mud covered the ground, making every step a struggle. He owned an ecological pond covering roughly one hectare, which the day before had merged with the neighbouring pond into a vast, uninterrupted sheet of water. “I’ve often watched flood coverage on the news and TV and felt for those affected, but honestly, going through it yourself feels entirely different. That sense of helplessness is hard to put into words. ” Realising there was nothing he could do at that moment, he could only manage a bitter smile.

His pond originally held bighead carp, silver carp, grass carp and other species. He had been raising them for around three years, but the flood has since washed them out and scattered them into nearby rivers. He has no idea how many might still be left. On his way back, he came across a farmer from the neighbouring pond, who looked even more exhausted and weather-beaten than he was. That farmer’s pond was several times larger than Qing Shoubo’s, and he had invested well over 500,000 yuan in it.

◉By 2 am on 8 July, power had finally been restored to Qing Shoubai’s farm. Image credit: Interviewee

Qing Shoubai has been involved in inland aquaculture since 2011. He considers himself well-versed in handling extreme weather, so when typhoon warnings were issued, he kept a close watch on the storm’s progress. In past years during the rainy season, clearing the drainage outlets in good time was usually enough to avert flooding. “It definitely won’t work this time; we just won’t make it,” he said. “When faced with a 100-year return period event, all your experience simply falls short.”

To invest in ecological aquaculture and keep up with the fish-pond rent, he has been borrowing from friends and relatives to scrape by for years. He held on until the past couple of years, when things finally began to look up, but this flood has dealt him another crushing blow.

Just before hanging up, he told Foodthink he would return to the fields later that night to have another look. Although the water is gradually receding, some people are secretly electrocuting fish in the standing pools, and he intends to go and stop them.