Back-to-back typhoons have brought torrential rain, flooding, and other extreme weather events to parts of southern and central China, and prompted mass evacuations of people living in the paths of the storms. Last week, Typhoon Maysak left 39 people dead, killed large numbers of livestock, and spawned two very rare tornados in central Hubei province. Video shared by state media showed residents of Hengzhou, in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, wading through muddied waters with nets as they attempted to recapture some of the hundreds of venomous snakes that escaped from a flooded local snake-breeding farm. Viral videos of roiling floodwaters after a dam breach at Liulan Reservoir in Guangxi were shared online and later deleted by censors; the breach resulted in at least 26 deaths, with nine people still missing.

CDT Chinese editors have archived a number of censored articles critical of flood prevention and response efforts, as well as the overly cautious and euphemistic reporting on the weather disasters. One now-deleted piece, from WeChat account Family Heritage Researcher, discusses the paucity of information being reported about the recent dam collapse, and reflects on the pernicious history of past dam disasters that went unreported and were only revealed decades after the fact.

Another censored article, from WeChat account Cognition Determines Your Horizons, poses five frank questions about the Liulan Reservoir breach, including why the reservoir failed just a year after a massive and expensive safety upgrade; whether the economic interests of fish-farmers overshadowed flood control; why a local resident’s 2025 video documenting the dam’s subsidence and cracking was ignored; what became of a 2009 promise to shore up the dam so that it could resist a “hundred-year flood”; and whether shoddy workmanship or poor maintenance was to blame for the dam’s collapse.

CDT has also archived two WeChat articles—from bloggers Cicero by the Sea and Mu Qi Says, respectively—criticizing Chinese social-media platforms for muting flood and dam-breach news and video content while continuing to boost Schadenfreude-tinged content about European heat-wave deaths.

A still-visible article from WeChat account Mr. Nameless, “The Emergency at Liulan Reservoir in Guangxi Has Added a New Phrase to the Public Vocabulary,” discusses the use of innocuous-sounding euphemisms in official statements and state-media reporting about the massive and deadly breach of the reservoir, which occurred only a year after the conclusion of an expensive project to shore up the structure:

This is a wonderful era, in that information technology is so advanced, we can quickly get a handle on events occurring in every corner of the globe.

This is a terrible era, in that nearly all of the news we see comes from what others want us to see.

The flooding in Guangxi continues. At first, everyone assumed it was just the usual torrential rainfall, but it soon became clear that the land had become waterlogged and that water levels, rather than receding as expected, were rising.

[…] Eventually the reservoir could no longer withstand the pressure. It continued to overflow, until it burst with a deafening crash, releasing a torrent that engulfed everything in its path …

Only when a steady stream of Guangxi residents began posting pleas for help online did the public gain an inkling of their suffering and helplessness.

[…] On the afternoon of July 6, "Liulan Reservoir, Hengzhou City, Nanning" began appearing on the trending-topics lists of all the major [social media] platforms. Some said the reservoir burst, others said it collapsed, and still others described it as a dam breach.

But though the wording varied, on-scene footage being shared online left no doubt that the situation at Liulan Reservoir was critical.

[…] By midday on the 6th, [Chinese] media outlets gradually began reporting on the Liulan Reservoir emergency, but they were extremely circumspect in their coverage, using phrases like "suspected collapse." That characterization was quickly denied by the local emergency management bureau, which stated unequivocally that it was “not a reservoir collapse.”

[…] It wasn’t until the afternoon of the 6th that major state-media outlets began covering the reservoir emergency. Xinhua reported that "a seriously dangerous situation occurred at Liulan Reservoir on the morning of the 6th," finally confirming the online rumors.

But here’s the truly baffling part: Liulan Reservoir hadn’t “burst” (崩了, bēng le), or “collapsed” (崩塌, bēngtā), nor “been breached” (决堤, juédī). Rather, “a gap appeared” (出现缺口, chūxiàn quēkǒu). [Some English-language state-media reports used the phrase “a breach appeared,” but the Chinese versions use the rather innocuous-sounding phrase “a gap appeared.”]

"A gap appeared" isn’t my personal phrasing; it’s the term used by every [Chinese] media outlet in all subsequent reporting.

I consider myself reasonably well-read, with decent reading comprehension, but this turn of phrase threw me for a loop.

[…] Judging from the on-site videos, could that swath of damage and destruction around the reservoir truly have been caused by something as simple as the appearance of "a gap?”

Admittedly, the written language truly has its charms—one of which is the boundless space it offers in which to stretch one’s imagination.

As such, the collapse of a one-meter stretch of dam can be called "a gap," as can the collapse of a ten-meter, or even a fifty-meter stretch.

So how big, exactly, was the “gap” that suddenly appeared in a stretch of the Liulan Reservoir? Digging through state-media reports, I located a precise figure: it seems there were two main breaches, a combined collapse of roughly 50 meters (164 feet) in length.

[…] Floods are a fairly common natural disaster; similar calamities occur across the country most every summer. Yet I have rarely, if ever, heard or seen the word "gap" used in reporting on such disasters.

[…] So why the insistence on the term "gap"? Why, whenever any other phrasing appeared online, was it swiftly "debunked" as a rumor? I can’t fathom a reason. But interestingly, while writing this article, I came across a document stating that […] between 2023-2025, the local government had secured 382.53 million yuan (US $56 million) in Ministry of Water Resources funding for a project to comprehensively renovate and upgrade the Liulan Reservoir irrigation district.

In June 2025, the Liulan Reservoir renovation project was completed and became fully operational.

In other words, scarcely one year elapsed between the completion of a 380-million-yuan reservoir renovation project and the appearance of a "gap" in that reservoir.

How could this happen after only one year? I suppose this might have been a “once-in-ten-thousand-year” flood; after all, the renovation and upgrade only accounted for a “once-in-a-thousand-year” flood scenario.

On the official WeChat account "Hengzhou Water Resources Bulletin," I found a report from last year, which concludes:

"Flood-control and safety capabilities have been significantly strengthened, thus creating a ‘bulwark’ to safeguard the lives and property of residents in townships downstream; irrigation and water-supply capacity has been greatly enhanced, guaranteeing a water supply for more than 20,000 mu (3,300 acres) of surrounding farmland and helping boost agricultural output and incomes." [Chinese]