Massive flood sweeps China following torrential rains. (Photo : Getty Images)
China rapid urbanization is now blamed for the country's most devastating flood in history.
The recent calamity that brought China to its knees with a hefty $44.7 billion damage cost is partly caused by the country's "ruthless" urbanization for the past years, an analysis from Forbes revealed.
Because of this, the outlet believes that it may be time for the country to start rethinking its current course of action that has been dominated by building more and more cities.
Worst Flood Ever
Previous reports stated that more than 100 people died during the massive flooding brought about by torrential rains and hundreds more have been reported missing.
According to China Daily, the cost of damages from this year's flood in China surpassed even that of the devastating 1998 floods that resulted to about $40 billion per the 2016 currency exchange rate.
This means that while both brought damages, this year's flooding, particularly in northern China proved to be the worst in the country's history.
In fact, it is now being dubbed as the most catastrophic and most expensive flood ever recorded all over the world, historically speaking per the World Atlas.
"More sobering than monetary losses, China is also a country that has suffered more casualties due to floods than any other," the website added.
Urbanization
With this in mind, one may come to ponder on what exactly made the country more prone to devastations brought by intense and constant torrential rains.
Forbes said it is due to the 'ruthless' urbanization in the Middle Kingdom.
Even with a rainfall count of 21% higher than the global average of the El Nino-intensified monsoon season, those 60 million Chinese residents should have seen less damage and negative effects from the catastrophe if only the country thought twice about their urbanization projects.
"As the storm sewers of many of China's cities have been pushed beyond their capacity, spewing deluges of water into the streets, many are blaming the disaster on the country's breakneck pace of urbanization," Forbes said.
There is reason to believe that such statement is true considering that the country already built more than 450 cities over the course of 35 years.
This means that even countryside communities have been turned into an area for skyscrapers, concrete roads, and clogged up sewers.
While the urbanization prove to be beneficial in China's economic and political setups with an increase of total GDP by up to 25 percent, Chinese officials should have halted their approval of building permits for even one instant and pondered what effects such development will have in the environment.
Now, it seems that China is realizing the full impact of their decision and seeing Mother Nature's unforgiving revenge.
