HUAINAN, CHINA — For days, the rain had come in warm, drenching sheets. It swelled the Huai River and turned the heavy clay soil along its watershed into a sticky muck that sucked the shoes off people's feet.
Zheng Zhaojun had lived here long enough, all of his 32 years, to know the danger the river posed. So when the Communist Party secretary for his village came calling, Zheng moved quickly.
"They told us the water is rising fast -- go," Zheng recalled as he stood in the doorway of the blue canvas tent that has been his family's temporary home for nearly two weeks. The tent, and dozens around it, stood about 10 feet from a small, hastily built earthen levee. Behind it, water stretched nearly to the horizon, covering Zheng's house and farm and the properties of thousands of others.
Zheng's story is a common one this summer. Heavy rains have inundated central China, causing the worst flooding in half a century. More than 100 million people have been affected, and some of them have witnessed rainfall of mind-boggling ferocity, according to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
Nearly as mind-boggling have been the size and scope of the evacuation.
Using the resources of a Communist Party system that still reaches into every crack and crevice of society, China has moved more than a million people from the paths of the floodwaters.
Over the weekend, Chinese President Hu Jintao visited the hard-hit city of Chongqing, wading through the streets in black galoshes and promising help. "This once-in-a-century rain has destroyed your homes and washed away your belongings, causing significant losses," he said, according to state media. "I am as sad as you. We must have the determination and courage to overcome this."
The evacuation process hasn't been perfect -- more than 500 people nationwide have lost their lives in the flooding. But compared with some of the epic floods in Chinese history, in which tens of thousands -- or hundreds of thousands -- of people have died, it has been a relatively efficient response.
"Different countries have different systems," said Xu Long, the vice president of Fengtai County in the eastern province of Anhui, which includes Huainan. "Maybe China has the unique advantage of having the party hierarchy."
Many Chinese now view the Communist Party as anachronistic in a nation with a rapidly expanding market economy. Many quietly resent its intrusion into all aspects of life, not to mention its periodic ruthlessness in stilling dissent.
