News of the July 6 flood in Nanning shook the whole country. On the morning of July 6, a major breach appeared in a section of the dam at Liulan Reservoir, the largest medium-sized reservoir in Hengzhou, Nanning. Water surged through the breach and burst the embankment, pouring downstream toward villages and buildings. Liulan Reservoir was built in 1958 and completed in 1960, making it about 66 years old; the dam is 42 meters high, with a total storage capacity of 95.52 million cubic meters, mainly used for hydropower generation, farmland irrigation, and drinking water supply. As of now, at least 6 people have died, 11 are missing, 375,000 have been affected, and 130,000 people have been urgently evacuated and resettled.
Typhoon “Maysak” brought extreme rainfall. Typhoon “Maysak” entered Dongxing City, Fangchenggang, Guangxi, from eastern Quảng Ninh Province, Vietnam, at around 3 a.m. on July 5, then moved north-northeastward into the interior of Guangxi.. Maysak brought torrential rain to Hengzhou: 565.0 mm in Shitang Town over 24 hours, 445.0 mm in Taowu Town, and 411.5 mm in Xiaoyi Town. The catchment area of Liulan Reservoir is 195 square kilometers, or 195 million square meters. Based on Shitang Town’s 565 mm rainfall, the total rainfall volume across the entire basin in 24 hours exceeded 110 million cubic meters.
But the collapse of Liulan Reservoir was entirely man-made. Reservoir engineering is a weapon for flood control and water storage, and reservoirs themselves carry the responsibility of flood prevention. During the socialist period, after a reservoir was completed, it was required that a management organization be established or a dedicated person be assigned to manage it; during the flood season, a flood-control organization had to be established or a dedicated person assigned to be responsible for flood prevention. In addition, flood prevention required the organization of a strong flood-control team; furthermore, it required the organization of a strong flood-control team, with the backbone formed by the basic militia of the people’s commune near the reservoir, while also recruiting young and middle-aged commune members to participate; during the flood season, flood-control equipment had to be prepared in advance, and the principles of relying on the masses, using local materials, and self-reliance had to be carried out in the provision of such equipment.
Socialist China specifically required that work be inspected well before the flood season, problems found be resolved in time, and the necessary protective measures be arranged. But because the Chinese revisionists are a regime of bureaucratic monopoly capitalist dictatorship, these people simply do not care whether the people live or die; even if a flood disaster happens, they can still run off somewhere else to eat, drink, and enjoy themselves. Originally, the reservoir should have long since undergone flood calculations, and various hidden dangers should have been investigated before the flood season, such as settlement, displacement, seepage volume, scouring, cracks, and leakage in the project. But the Chinese revisionists did not do this work. Instead, they even took the opportunity of “repairing” the Liulan Dam to embezzle a large sum of reservoir repair funds.
In August 2024, Nanning officially approved the implementation plan for standardized management and creation for Liulan Reservoir and Dadong Reservoir, and simultaneously launched a systematic renovation and upgrading project with a one-year construction period, scheduled for full completion and handover in June 2025. On June 25, 2025, reporters also visited Liulan Reservoir and Dadong Reservoir in Hengzhou, where the fresh scene after the completion of standardized construction was striking: the leveled and hardened road atop the dam extended into the distance, neatly arranged and prominently visible safety signs stood in order, intelligent monitoring equipment operated in an orderly manner, and a new water conservancy landscape combining safety and aesthetics gradually unfolded.
An image of a screenshot of the “Liulan Reservoir Hazard Removal and Reinforcement Project Tender Announcement” also circulated online. The screenshot shows a total tender budget of 73.62 million yuan, designed for a once-in-a-century flood.
On the Nanning government services website, the Chinese revisionists used verbose language to say that these more than 70 million yuan were, in fact, just used to fill a gap.
In fact, Hengzhou spent more than 300 million yuan between 2023 and 2025 to “construct and repair” Liulan Reservoir. After only a year, this dam, which had cost more than 300 million yuan to repair, simply collapsed, and the surging floodwaters inundated the homes of hundreds of thousands of people in Hengzhou.
Not only did the Chinese revisionists fail to carry out any repairs or take any safety measures before the flood season, they also did nothing to promptly calculate the reservoir’s flood-control capacity once the torrential rain was already pouring down. Instead, they kept delaying the matter of opening the sluice gates to release floodwater. On July 5, the reservoir service station first announced that the gates would be opened at 22:00 that night to regulate the flood, and then, because “the rainfall was much greater than forecast,” moved the opening up to 20:30.
In the early hours of July 6, the Liulan Reservoir service station issued an urgent notice warning of flood discharge through the fully opened No. 4 sluice gate, stating that due to a sharp increase in rainfall runoff, the reservoir water level was rising rapidly. At 02:30 on July 6, the water level of Liulan Reservoir reached 111.20 meters, 0.91 meters above the design flood level and below the checked flood level. Under such an emergency situation, the person in charge of Liulan Reservoir actually set the time for fully opening the flood gates for discharge at 6:00 a.m. on July 6. Around 10:20 a.m., two breaches about 50 meters wide appeared in the dam body, causing an overtopping dam failure and a large amount of floodwater to rush downstream. Around 11:00 a.m., the dam body at the scene had already suffered two collapses, with massive floodwaters surging downstream. In such a severe situation, it was not until 11:30 a.m. that Nanning upgraded its flood-control response from Level III to Level I.
A resident downstream from Liulan Reservoir interviewed by Red Star News said they received a flood discharge warning the night before, but when they woke up in the morning, the first floor of their home was already flooded. Around 9:00 a.m., they received a call from the village committee telling all residents to evacuate immediately to higher ground upstream. The Beijing News interviewed relatives of residents in Liulan Village, who said that after 9:00 a.m. on July 6, Liulan Reservoir notified them that water would be released through the sluice gates. Some villagers had already gone up the mountain for temporary resettlement, but many people still could not evacuate in time. The same report also said that in Nankang Village, about 8 kilometers from the reservoir, floodwaters had already reached the village entrance around 7:30 a.m.; an hour later, the water entered the village and the first floor was flooded.
The problem is that Liulan Reservoir had already exceeded the design flood level at 2:30 a.m. on July 6, and the sluice gates were fully opened at 6:00 a.m. to discharge floodwater, but many downstream residents did not receive emergency evacuation notices until around 9:00 a.m.; by around 10:20 a.m., breaches had already appeared in the dam. The effective time left for evacuation was extremely short, and many people had no time to get out before the floodwaters had already risen above the first floor.
