BEIJING (Reuters) -Natural disasters across China in the first half of 2025 brought direct economic losses of 54.11 billion yuan ($7.55 billion) and affected more than 23 million people, an official from the emergency response ministry said on Tuesday.
A powerful earthquake in Tibet, deadly landslides in the southwestern provinces and widespread flooding in the southern regions were among the most damaging events.
Among the 23 million people affected by natural disasters, 307 died or are missing, and 620,000 faced emergency evacuation, Shen Zhanli, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Emergency Management, told a press conference.
Some 29,600 houses were destroyed, a 28.7% increase from a year ago, while 2.19 million hectares of crops sustained damage.
The economic losses were 41.9% less than the same period last year, according to a Reuters calculation, when flooding, drought and extreme temperatures cost China 93.16 billion yuan, the highest half-year figure since 2019.
Floods caused the most damage, accounting for over 90% of this year’s total losses at 51 billion yuan, the ministry said.
To mitigate the impact from increasingly frequent extreme rainfall, China has expanded its economic safety net for segments of its population affected by flood control schemes, including pledges of direct compensation from the central government and payments for livestock losses.
The world’s No.2 economy is facing growing threats from extreme weather, which meteorologists link to climate change.
Large swathes of the country have been grappling with torrential rains and extreme heat in recent weeks, with ageing flood defences and infrastructure gaps – such as limited access to air conditioning – exposed.
Dozens of rivers in southwestern China exceeded safe levels last week while more than 10,000 people were evacuated in the remnants of former typhoon Danas.
Meanwhile, surging demand for air conditioning due to sweltering heat has stretched China’s power grid, pushing the national maximum power load to a record high.
The ministry warned that flood and typhoon prevention will remain challenging from the second half of July to first half of August, as rainfall becomes most concentrated and intense in the north and typhoon activity intensifies.
($1 = 7.1709 Chinese yuan renminbi)
(Reporting by Ethan Wang, Yukun Zhang and Liz Lee; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman, Alexandra Hudson)
