South China’s Guangxi renews 2nd-highest alert for flood as rivers swell

South China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region on Thursday renewed an orange alert for flood first issued two days ago as warning levels have been surpassed at 20 monitoring stations along 14 rivers across the region.

The capital city of Nanning on Wednesday upgraded its emergency response to floods from Level-III to Level-II.

As of Thursday afternoon, the water level at a monitoring station in the Nanning section of the Yujiang River had reached 76.24 meters, 3.24 meters above the warning level and higher than that in the morning.

In order to prevent collision between ships and bridges, the Nanning Maritime Safety Administration is closely following updates on rainfall and water discharges from locks to monitor water levels in bridge areas and issue navigation notices in a timely manner.

"At waterway sections where warning levels have been surpassed, we have implemented temporary traffic control, banning ships from passing through these areas except rescue ships and ships performing official duties," said Wen Jianxin, deputy director of the navigation management office of the administration.

Local authorities started traffic control on the Yongjiang Bridge and in flooded road sections Wednesday evening, banning motor vehicles, non-motor vehicles and pedestrians, while suspending services in some riverside museums and scenic areas.

Since Wednesday, pipe bursts have occurred in several locations along the Yongjiang River. The relevant departments have organized rescuers to evacuate residents and take precautions against dam failure.

As of Thursday morning, Nanning had closed 26 floodgates to prevent the flood from spreading to the urban area.

In the meantime, more than 1,600 people have been deployed to patrol riverbanks, with 3,000 more standing by in case of emergency.

Materials for emergency response have been placed at weak links to prepare for possible breaches.

The regional emergency management department has also transferred to Nanning a total of 5,700 pieces of flood relief materials, including inflatable boats, geotextiles, tents, folding beds, tables and stools, to guarantee the basic living conditions for affected residents.

China has a four-tier flood-control emergency-response system, with Level-I being the most severe response, as well as a four-tier color-coded weather warning system, with red representing the most severe, followed by orange, yellow and blue.

South China’s Guangxi renews 2nd-highest alert for flood as rivers swell

With the beginning of the cotton harvest season, northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region is anticipating higher yields from advancements in agricultural technology and mechanization.

Xinjiang is the largest production area of high-quality commodity cotton in China. The 2.47-million-hectare cotton growing area in the region has produced more than 5 million tons of cotton for six consecutive years.

The northern and southern parts of the vast autonomous region have different climates, different cotton varieties and also different growing periods. Currently, cotton picking started two weeks ago in northern Xinjiang, while the harvesting has just begun in the southern areas.

In Tumxuk City, located in southern Xinjiang, cotton farmers are using all-in-one harvesters to help them pick cotton, separate the flowers from the stalks and pack them into bundles.

"In the past, we picked the cotton manually. It took us more than a month to pick 100 mu (6.67 hectares) of cotton, and the cost reached 1,000 yuan per mu (about 2,106 U.S. dollars per hectare). Now, we use domestically produced cotton pickers to gather them, which have high efficiency and low cost. It now takes less than a day to harvest my 100 mu of cotton, with a cost less than 200 yuan per mu," said Turaxun Samat, a local farmer.

This year, Xinjiang has vigorously promoted the new cotton planting technology of drip irrigation under the mulching film at the appropriate emergence temperature, replacing the old method of irrigating before sowing. The technology can greatly improve the emergence rate while also saving water resources.

In addition, the precision sowing supported by BeiDou Navigation Satellite System and remote sensing monitoring by the agricultural big data platform have also been widely adopted across Xinjiang, contributing to the growth of cotton output.

"This year, a total of 1,057,800 mu (about 70,520 hectares) of cotton have been planted in Tumxuk City, and the unginned cotton yield is estimated at 451.4 kilograms per mu, an average increase of 11.7 kilograms per mu over the previous year," said Chen Yongsen, a member of the leadership of the city's Bureau of Agriculture and Rural Affairs.

The cotton harvesting in Xinjiang is expected to end in early November.

Xinjiang enters cotton harvest season with higher yield expected