ping
Was it on purpose?
1975
... making way for glorious new tractor factory!
I always keep this kind of thing in mind when looking at estimates of innocent people murdered by the Chinese government during “The Great Leap Forward”.
Low estimates (usually given by those sympathetic to the Communist government) is around 40 million innocent souls murdered.
High estimates I have seen are 150 million.
Given the disparity here between 85K and 230K, well...you get the idea.
Good to keep in mind who the Chinese government really is.
As Chinese peasants say - they are no better than ants in the eyes of their nation and government.
Everyone thinks good engineering is expensive.
Bad engineering is even more expensive...
This is the inevitable result of giving the government control over the environment.
Before the Iron Curtain fell, environmentalists focused on actual pollution - chemicals not found in nature that make people sick when they are dumped in the air, land or water. The only solution was more government control and higher taxes!
Then the Iron Curtain fell and most of the Eastern European countries were shown to be environmental cesspools. Communist and socialist countries have terrible environmental records when compared to capitalist countries, because people take much better care of their own private property than the government does when it controls all of the property.
So the environmentalist left shifted their focus from actual pollution to carbon dioxide, a trace gas that is not only found in nature but is essential to the continued existence of all life on Earth. Why carbon dioxide? Because capitalist countries, being more successful and providing a much higher quality of life, produce more carbon dioxide per capita than communist and socialist countries, which barely produce anything. The only solution is still more government control and higher taxes.
Yet another entry in the Annals of Government Transparency.
Clearly it was Trump’s fault!
So...a typhoon came ashore and was blocked in place for three days by a pressure ridge, dumping a years worth of rain while it was stalled.
Sound familiar?
I do remember the World Almamac listing the disaster as ‘flooding’ in that time period, along with at least 250,000 deaths (I don’t remember the exact number), so the huge disaster was known about...but, no, I don’t remember anything about dam bursts, but no surprise either, back then.