While seasonal downpours have wreaked havoc across east China,
other areas are suffering the effects of this summer's drought,
with about 7.6 million people in rural areas and 6.3 million
livestock facing drinking water shortages.
To date, more than 5 million hectares of crops have been
affected, with nearly 40 percent of those facing the prospect of a
failed harvest, according to a source with the Beijing-based State
Flood-control and Drought Relief Headquarters.
"There has not been enough rain in Shanxi,
Inner
Mongolia and Ningxia across
north and northwest China since late last month. Dry spells have
also hit mountainous regions in central China's Hunan
and southwest China's Guizhou
Province as well as Chongqing
Municipality," the source said.
In Alxa League in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region where a
drought has scorched the grasslands, camels' humps have shrunk and
many goats have died of thirst.
"Bodies of dead goats can be seen along the roads," Lian Jun, a
reporter working for China National Radio in Ningxia Hui Autonomous
Region, said in a report.
In Datong, Shuozhou, Xinzhou and Yuncheng cities in Shanxi
Province, rain has been 70 percent less than normal while more than
1.4 million hectares of farmland, 40 percent of the province's
total, are suffering the effects of drought.
In central China's Hunan Province, about 80,000 storage ponds
have dried up, as have more than 1,170 rivulets in mountainous
areas, due to the lack of rainfall since June.
In Xiushan, a county in southern Chongqing, residents in some
villages have to travel up to seven kilometers to fetch
water.
(China Daily August 12, 2005)