This July 25, the Liangma River, which crosses Beijing’s third ring road, is transformed into an open-air swimming pool. Dejected by the heat, the good-natured guards no longer even pay attention to the swimmers who dive into the brackish waters of this river lined with skyscrapers. “I prefer to come at the end of the day when it’s less hot, explains an old Beijinger armed with a fishing rod. The rest of the time, I stay at home or, if it’s really too hot, I go to a center commercial take advantage of the air conditioning”.
bitumen molasses
In places, the streets seem covered with a black molasses of pebbles and melted bitumen where even dogs dare not venture. The temperatures flirt with 40 degrees and the humidity transforms each outing into an open-air sauna. After a sweltering month of June, nearly a hundred Chinese cities are placed on red alert for the heat wave, and the thermometer continues to climb. Since Saturday July 23, the Middle Kingdom has entered the “dashu”, the hottest and humid cycle of the Chinese lunar calendar promising new heat records.
Almost everywhere, the swimming pools are taken by storm, the metro stations act as refuge, like certain anti-bombing shelters which offer a respite from the stifling heat. “The most difficult thing is having to queue in the sun for the PCR tests,” laments a mother in Beijing. In the Chinese capital, screenings are compulsory every three days, regardless of the heat, the sun or the frequent hailstorms in the heart of summer. In their Hamzat jumpsuits and covered from head to toe in plastic sheeting, screening officers sometimes faint from the heat. “We can’t work for more than an hour without stopping,” breathes a nurse, her cheeks flushed from the heat. These high temperatures are expected to last longer than usual this year, at least until August 24, according to forecasts from the National Meteorological Administration.
Rationed electricity
The air conditioners that equip most homes are running at full speed, causing electricity consumption to explode. In some hotels in Shanghai, the air conditioning cannot drop below 28 degrees to avoid additional costs, while the economic capital beat a 149-year-old heat record in mid-July!
In the province of Zhejiang, 65 million inhabitants and thousands of factories already have to ration their electricity consumption. This is the case for the most energy-intensive industries such as polyester producers and textile factories. Last winter, China had already experienced power outages due to shortages of coal (which produces nearly 60% of the national electricity). After long months of confinement linked to the Covid epidemic, this new wave of cuts risks affecting the economic recovery. “Every evening, the local authorities tell us when the power will be rationed, explains the boss of a shoe factory, near Yiwu. I try to make my workers work at night when it is cooler to limit the use air conditioners, but the machines produce a lot of heat and we can’t work at the same speed as usual. I was hoping to catch up with the delay linked to the confinements of April, May and June, but that seems to me to be compromised. ”
Risk of “blackout”
To avoid the “blackout”, the authorities have decided to use more coal, a disaster for the environment. China has had to recommission several hundred often dilapidated and polluting thermal power stations and reopen several coal mines. “It will not be enough, believes Wu Jinghan, of Greenpeace China. The problems are mainly due to poor integration of production, network, load and storage.” Built of raw concrete and without insulation, many buildings are also real thermal sieves.
By 2070, a vast agricultural region of China is even threatened with extinction, according to a study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in the United States. Published in the journal Nature in 2018, it shows that the combination of heat and humidity could transform an area of 400,000 square kilometers between Beijing and Shanghai, with a population of 400 million, into a desert.
“Sponge Towns”
The world’s biggest polluter, China is struggling to limit its CO2 emissions and galloping urbanization is covering more and more land, which has become impermeable. In addition to these scorching temperatures, there are indeed episodes of heavy rain causing flooding, as in Zhengzhou, a megalopolis of 12 million inhabitants located in the heart of this great plain. In the summer of 2021, as much rain fell there in three days as in a normal year, causing catastrophic floods and causing more than 300 deaths.
In 2015, the government launched several pilot projects of “sponge cities” to help drain water and better respect ecosystems, to no avail. By sacrificing the environment on the altar of economic growth, China is likely to experience increasingly deadly summers.