Authorities in southwest China’s Sichuan province extended industrial power cuts to next week even as the drought warning was expanded to a central Chinese province in a scorching summer that is the country’s driest in six decades, state media reported on Saturday.
China’s Hubei is the latest the latest province to announce a level four emergency drought warning, triggered by “sustained hot weather” and low rainfall in at least 84 counties, the official Xinhua news agency reported. The new declaration affects the central Chinese province’s population of at least 5.7 million people.
“In addition, a total of 218,100 people had difficulties accessing drinking water, while 690,470 hectares of crops had been damaged due to the drought,” the Xinhua report said.
Meanwhile, the Sichuan province and the sprawling Chongqing municipality in southwest China decided to extend the industrial power cuts until August 24 to tide over the crisis and ensure supplies to homes.
“The power cuts will hamper some key firms’ operations in the region, such as Toyota Motor Corp and China’s CATL, the world’s largest battery maker, which suspended work at its plant in Sichuan,” the state-run tabloid, Global Times reported.
Other sectors, including photovoltaics, electronics and chips, which use Sichuan or Chongqing as important bases, are also affected, although some told the Global Times that the overall impact is limited.
The drought, said to be the worst since 1961 by Chinese media, has primarily affected large stretches of Hubei, Sichuan, Jiangxi, Anhui and Hunan provinces besides Chongqing.
Low rainfall and high temperatures have impacted the water flow in China’s longest river, Yangtze, which flows through these provinces.
“Since July, most areas of the Yangtze River basin have experienced high temperatures, and there has been 45 percent less rainfall than the average over recent years,” the Chinese water resources ministry has said.
Since August, reservoirs have replenished some 5.3 billion cubic metres of water in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze river to lessen the impact of the drought.
However, with reservoirs drying up in the heat, the efforts to replenish the river’s water has been impacted.
“In Jiangxi, Lake Poyang, the country’s largest freshwater lake, has lost three-quarters of its surface area due to a lack of rainfall. It now covers only 737 square kilometers, compared to 850 at the same time in 2021,” Xinhua said in a report.
