China's Water Ministry Warns of Severe Flooding and Drought in 2026

China's Ministry of Water Resources issued its most urgent pre-season flood warning in a decade on Tuesday, projecting that the 2026 monsoon season will bring severe flooding across the Yangtze, Pearl, and Huai river basins while drought conditions persist across the Yellow River watershed and northeast provinces.

"The hydrological situation this year is abnormal. Multiple basins face simultaneous flood risk while northern regions remain in deficit," Vice Minister Liu Weiping said at a National Flood Control and Drought Relief briefing in Beijing, according to a ministry transcript.

The dual forecast — extreme wet in the south, extreme dry in the north — affects regions home to more than 800 million people.

What the Models Show

China Meteorological Administration data released alongside the ministry warning shows that soil moisture in Guangdong, Guangxi, and Hunan provinces is already 25-40% above the five-year average for early April. Rainfall across southern China in March exceeded historical norms by 31%, according to the administration's satellite monitoring division.

The Yangtze River Commission, which manages the world's third-longest river, has begun pre-emptive drawdowns at the Three Gorges Dam. Water levels were lowered by 4.5 metres in the last week of March to create storage capacity ahead of the June-August peak, the commission reported.

In the north, the picture is inverted. The Yellow River's Lanzhou gauge station recorded flows 18% below the ten-year average in March. Groundwater levels in Hebei province — the agricultural heart of the North China Plain — dropped another 1.2 metres over the winter, extending a decline that has persisted since 2019, according to the Ministry of Natural Resources.

Agricultural Stakes

The split hydrology threatens both of China's major grain-producing systems. Southern rice paddies depend on predictable monsoon flooding — but excessive or early flooding destroys seedbeds. The ministry said Hunan and Jiangxi provinces, which together produce 15% of China's rice, face the highest flood risk during the May transplanting window.

Northern wheat, which accounts for roughly 70% of China's total wheat production, depends on irrigation from the Yellow River and groundwater. The current drought projection threatens the June harvest across Henan, Shandong, and Hebei — provinces that produced 191 million tonnes of grain in 2025, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

"If the monsoon arrives early and heavy in the south while the north stays dry, you have a food production problem on both ends simultaneously," said Ma Jun, director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs in Beijing.

Urban Flood Defences Tested

China invested 1.2 trillion yuan ($165 billion) in flood control infrastructure between 2020 and 2025, according to ministry figures. The programme upgraded drainage in 60 cities and reinforced 31,000 kilometres of river dykes.

But rapid urbanisation has continued to pave over natural flood absorption areas. A 2025 study in the journal Nature Water found that impervious surface area in China's ten largest southern cities grew by 12% between 2019 and 2024, reducing rainwater infiltration capacity by an estimated 8 billion cubic metres annually.

Zhengzhou, where 398 people died in subway flooding during a 2021 rainstorm, completed a $3.4 billion "sponge city" retrofit in December 2025. The system has not been tested by a major storm.

"The infrastructure is better than 2021. The climate signal is worse," said Lei Chaogui, a hydrologist at Tsinghua University, in an interview with Caixin.

Global Context

China is not alone in facing compound water extremes. The western United States is in its worst snow drought on record, with snowpack across the Colorado River basin at 42% of normal, according to the US Natural Resources Conservation Service. Australia's Bureau of Meteorology has forecast a return to El Niño conditions by mid-2026, which historically correlates with drought across Southeast Asia and eastern Australia while intensifying rainfall in South America.

The World Meteorological Organization said in its March State of the Climate update that 2025 was the hottest year on record and that 2026 was tracking to match or exceed it through the first quarter.

China's State Council is expected to approve an updated national flood response plan by April 15. Provincial governors in the seven most-affected basins have been ordered to complete readiness inspections by April 10, according to the ministry statement.