Is Vietnam affected by floods in China?

According to the warning of the China Central Meteorological Station, on June 28-29, China will continue to suffer heavy rain over a large area, especially in the southern and central provinces of China.

According to the warning of the China Central Meteorological Station, provinces and cities such as Guizhou, Hunan, Hubei, Anhui, Jiangsu, Shanghai... will experience moderate to very heavy rain. In particular, some places in Jiangsu and Shanghai will experience heavy rain in a short time with rainfall of about 30-50mm/h, some places will have thunderstorms accompanied by unusual weather phenomena.

China's Central Meteorological Station also warned that localities need to do a good job of preventing storms and floods, and be on guard against flash floods in some mountainous areas.

This is also the 27th consecutive day (from June 2 to June 28) that the China Central Meteorological Station has issued warnings of heavy rain in the country's localities, a rare event. According to statistics, the heavy rains that have lasted from the beginning of June until now have caused serious damage to 26 provinces and cities of China, especially the southern region, with more than 11 million people affected.

Of these, nearly 600,000 people had to be relocated, 9,300 houses collapsed, 861,000 hectares of crops were damaged, and the estimated economic loss was about 24.1 billion yuan (about 3.5 billion USD). The storm also caused water levels on many major rivers in China to exceed flood warning levels.

Faced with the serious developments of the flood situation in this country, yesterday (June 28), Chinese President Xi Jinping also issued a directive requiring localities to do a good job of storm prevention as well as relief work for people in areas affected by natural disasters.

Regarding the historic floods in China and people's concerns about the risk that could affect Vietnam, Mr. Nguyen Van Huong - Head of Climate Forecasting Department, National Center for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting affirmed: "The areas of heavy rain and floods currently occurring in China are mainly concentrated in the Eastern and Southeast regions of China and do not affect Vietnam."

Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development - Nguyen Hoang Hiep - Member of the Central Steering Committee for Natural Disaster Prevention and Control said: "The current floods in Southern China do not affect Vietnam. All floodwater flows into the sea towards Japan, not into the East Sea."

Talking about the risks of floodwaters pouring into the Three Gorges Dam (China), Deputy Minister Nguyen Hoang Hiep shared: “The Three Gorges Dam in Hubei Province (China), about 70km from Wuhan, will not affect Vietnam. If floods occur in Yunnan, it could affect Vietnam.”

Noting some issues with reservoirs in the North of Vietnam when entering the flood season, Deputy Minister Nguyen Hoang Hiep said: "Large hydroelectric reservoirs in Vietnam have flood prevention capacity, so floods at the designed frequency can basically be controlled. But small hydroelectric reservoirs do not have flood prevention capacity, so if water discharge is not well managed before the flood, it will lead to the risk of flood on flood. Therefore, it is recommended that sectors and localities pay close attention to this issue."