Yangtze River Flood (1935)

The Yangtze River flood of 1935 struck China in the midst of a decade wracked by flooding, famine, and social turmoil. It was the fifth-deadliest flood in recorded history, with a death toll of about 145,000. Millions more who survived were displaced, injured, suffered from loss of property or jobs, or went with too little food. The Yangtze River is the longest river in Asia, and has been home to human cultures since more than 20,000 years B.C.E. Because of its importance to trade, transportation, and agriculture, settlements have often been built close enough to the banks to be vulnerable to times of flood.

About three-quarters of China's floods are caused by the Yangtze. Yangtze flooding occurs during most non-drought years, making both flooding and mudslides perennial problems during the monsoon season (from June to September), typically leading to several hundred deaths annually. The mudslides in turn threaten to make future consequences more severe, by eroding natural flood barriers. Deforestation, which was becoming widespread by the 1930s, exacerbated the problem, because plant root systems help to absorb water and hold soil in place, resisting landslides.

In 1931, after three years of drought, both the Yangtze and Yellow rivers flooded in the worst nonpandemic disaster of the century, leading to millions of deaths. The country had not yet fully recovered when in 1935, the Yangtze flooded again, due to heavy rain in early summer. The drainage reservoirs, floodwater channels, and other flood relief infrastructure were soon overwhelmed.

The Yangtze flooding primarily affected the provinces of Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, Anhui, Jiangsu, and Zheijang, all in the middle and lower reaches of the river. As in 1931, the previous year had been a drought year, leading to a grain shortage that the floods prolonged by washing away crops and seed. One and a half million hectares of farmland were flooded. The early summer flooding of the Han River, a tributary of the Yangtze, also resulted in a 1935 rice shortage, as much of the rice-producing province of Hubei was flooded.

At the time of the flood, China was not only still recovering from the earlier disaster, it was also in the midst of the prolonged armed conflict with Japan, which had been intermittent throughout the decade and was in the process of leading up to the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–45), as a result of Japan's repeated attempts to dominate the country and put its natural resources, food, and labor at the service of the Japanese empire. There were also continual disputes between the Chinese Nationalist Army and the Red Army (of the Chinese Communist Party), in the years leading up to the Chinese Civil War. For these reasons, humanitarian aid was already arriving in China before the ravages of the flood and the resulting famine. As with many other disasters [Page 804]of the era, funding for relief was raised through private donation to organizations like the Red Cross. Newspapers around the world ran articles about the calamities of the Yangtze flood—the crops that had been lost, landslides, and standing water that made it impossible for farmers to even start over and replant.

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