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Business of climate change
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Climate change: China’s ‘sponge cities’ struggle to soak up flooding from severe storms despite billions in investment

  • Chinese cities have spent more than 1 trillion yuan (US$140 billion) on infrastructure to absorb rainfall and minimise flood damage
  • That is a mere drop in the bucket compared with what is needed to deal with the deluges climate change is dumping on the nation

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Illustration: Henry Wong
Yujie XueandMartin Choi

Shenzhen resident Autumn Fang spent nearly two days at home without water or power in September when Typhoon Saola lashed southern China with record-breaking rainstorms. Near her home, people were paddling lifeboats in knee-high water to rescue stranded pedestrians.

“That’s the crossroads I walk by every day,” she said. “I’ve never seen Shenzhen like this.” Indeed, the city got hit by the heaviest rain since meteorological records began in 1952. Average rainfall across the city from the afternoon of September 7 to the next morning surpassed 200mm, while some areas received a deluge of 470mm, according to authorities.

As 2023 broke the record for the hottest year ever, with heatwaves and wildfires raging all around the world, China also suffered from several major floods, which led to direct economic losses of 32 billion yuan (US$4.5 billion) in the first three quarters.

These disasters raised questions about the effectiveness of China’s climate-resilience strategy for extreme rainfall, the “sponge city” initiative launched nationwide in 2015. Experts say that the basic idea – making cities better at absorbing excess rain – is a sound one. But its roll-out so far has turned out to be something of a damp squib. For the initiative to truly hold water, infrastructure must be deployed more rapidly. Even then it will not, on its own, protect against the most severe events that climate change is spawning, experts say.

Rescue workers go through a flooded street in a neighbourhood where days of heavy rain from remnants of Typhoon Doksuri caused heavy damage in Beijing, on August 1, 2023. Photo: Reuters
Rescue workers go through a flooded street in a neighbourhood where days of heavy rain from remnants of Typhoon Doksuri caused heavy damage in Beijing, on August 1, 2023. Photo: Reuters
China is among the world’s most highly exposed countries to floods, with nearly 400 million people directly exposed to once-in-100-year floods, representing more than a third of global exposure, according to a study published by World Bank in 2022. The country loses an estimated 1 per cent of its gross domestic product each year to floods, with more than 640 cities subject to flood risks and 67 per cent of the population living in flood-prone areas, World Bank said.

China’s State Council, the cabinet, announced the sponge city initiative in 2015. Similar to the concept of “low-impact development” in the United States and Canada, the approach calls for more green and blue spaces, like trees, wetland parks, and lakes, to be placed among conventional infrastructure like roads and buildings. This mimics natural water cycles to allow cities to soak up rainwater, then drain it away or make use of it.

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