China is currently experiencing the longest and hottest heat wave since 1961, the year in which meteorological accounting began, where it now threatens agriculture, industry and water supply throughout the country, and it can also have much wider consequences, disrupting all global supply chains.
For 70 consecutive days, most of China has suffered from severe heat and drought. On 18 August, the temperature in Chunqin, a municipality with more than 32 million inhabitants in the south-west of the country, reached 45 °C, the highest temperature ever recorded in China outside the Xinjiang desert. On 20 August, the same city never had a temperature below 34.9 °C. This is the highest minimum temperature ever recorded in the country at this time of the year.
Rivers and reservoirs are extremely low; since July, the Yangtze river basin has been under 45 per cent of the norm; up to 66 rivers have dried up in 34 Chunqin counties, according to the State television channel CCTV; Lake Pojan, the country ' s largest freshwater reserve, has been reduced by more than two thirds.
Since July, the municipality of Chunqin has had a temperature above 35 °C for more than 33 days. Many residents have taken refuge in conditioned underground subway stations. Since 18 August, the city has been operating a red alert system, the highest weather warning system in the country. On 19 August, the Chinese authorities announced a national drought warning for the first time in nine years. "
Not only is it very hot, nor is it raining, but several factories have already been forced to close down, and large cities have been forced to turn off the lights due to a lack of electricity — more than three quarters of the electricity in Sichuan province is usually supplied by hydroelectric dams; because of the increased demand for air conditioners in offices and houses, the power system is under pressure; water shortages will inevitably hamper Beijing's ambition to use electricity for coal-fired power generators.
China is one of the world's largest producers of agricultural produce, the world's largest producer of rice and wheat and the second largest producer of maize, among other common foods, and in other words, the situation can have serious global consequences.
The southern and central provinces of China — especially those along the Yangtze River, such as Jiangsu, Hubei and Sichuan — were the most affected. "
In the province of Sichuan alone, almost 47,000 hectares of crops have already been lost; in order to correct the situation and save the cereal harvest this fall, the Ministry of Agriculture of China announced that it would try to cause rain by setting clouds with chemicals and spraying the crops with a moisture containment agent to limit evaporative, but the effectiveness of this method has yet to be proved and, at best, it is unlikely to change the situation given the gravity of the current situation.
Therefore, an unusually hot and dry summer will once again slow the country ' s economy
Experts also fear that the regulation of energy consumption may affect some of the world ' s largest electronics companies, such as Intel and Foxconn, CNN. Sichuan Province, where production had to be stopped last week, is the centre of the production of semiconductors and solar batteries. The province is also the epicentre of lithium production in China; therefore, interruptions can lead to higher prices for this metal, which is a key element of batteries for electric vehicles.
And China