r/worldnews • u/Saltedline • 18h ago
China is concealing scale of flood disaster, say Tibet campaigners
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/aug/31/china-concealing-scale-nepal-flood-disaster-say-tibet-campaigners1.1k
u/Humble-Alarm-5507 16h ago
For China side, only the checkpoint and 2~3km roads beyond that checkpoint was affected. The flood came from high mountain in Nepal, hit the Chinese checkpoint, and went to Nepal lower elevated areas. Most likely the dead bodies occurred in the Chinese checkpoint were flushed to Nepal side. That's why China just reported very small number of death but ~500 missing.
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u/PhysicallyTender 15h ago
Yeah, no need for conspiracy theories when simple explanation will do.
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u/grimenishi 7h ago
To add to this, China is a bit slow to release statistics for actual deceased, as they will usually count all as missing until identified, despite having a higher number of unidentified, deceased individuals on hand or an almost certain chance that the missing are deceased. This is mostly done due to legal obligations when someone is identified without a doubt for inheritance, insurance, death certificates, etc.
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u/loned__ 15h ago
Satellite images do not show the flood goes “much further” beyond the 2- 3 km checkpoint connection at the border. Also, aside from the customs area, there is no village existed in that short route. The whole news narrative relies on audience not checking satellite images themselves to work.
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u/xlzray 11h ago
You know what, Gyirong town only has 4000 people and most are living in the town and villages near the town center which is 23 kilometers away from Gyirong port. The town's altitude is 2900 meters while the port is 1800 meters, there's a 1000 meter gap.
Only a few villages are affected by the flood, just affected not flooded, as they are all on mountain top not hard to find if you know google earth.
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u/hextreme2007 7h ago
Just check the map or Google Earth and see what's upstream 2-3 km. Nothing except the road.
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u/gravitysort 18h ago
The International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) is a non-profit advocacy group based in Washington, D.C. and has offices in Amsterdam, Brussels and Berlin.
Okay. They probably know as much facts about the flood as any redditor here.
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u/viperabyss 18h ago
I’d imagine they have sources on the ground in Tibet, being an advocacy group for said population.
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u/Grow_away_420 12h ago
I'm skeptical a D.C. based non-profit advocating for Tibet does much more advocating than "China bad"
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u/obeytheturtles 10h ago
Well China did invade them and has since been engaging in ethnic cleansing and suppression of Tibetan culture, even going as far as to abduct and disappear a Tibetan child in an attempt to break the Dalai Lama's reincarnation cycle.
It's possible that China just bad in this situation.
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u/Available-Green6599 18h ago
How much do the people on the ground know? Not like this happened in half a major city
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u/FourRiversSixRanges 17h ago
Word spreads and they have phones. They live in the 21st century as well.
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u/Available-Green6599 15h ago
Where are the phone videos of the event from the Chinese side? The flood hit the Chinese where it’s got the greatest kinetic energy basically everything is wiped out. All the videos we have are basically cloud backed cctv videos. Also word of mouth Chinese whispers is worse than no source
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u/FourRiversSixRanges 14h ago
China has heavy surveillance/control systems .
Maybe, but isn’t that why China should be more forthcoming?
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u/Available-Green6599 14h ago
Is the claim that China should have 360 degree view of every place in China? We already some cctv footage and any footage that’s not immediately uploaded to the internet will not have power to be uploaded anytime soon. Literally still digging there way there. Personal videos or dashcam recording that survives the mud will still need to be digged out. It’s not like there’s some village just over looking this border checkpoint to give you guys a good view
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u/bukpockwajeacks 17h ago
Game of telephone spreads
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u/FourRiversSixRanges 17h ago
Sure. But that’s more of a reason why China should be more open about this.
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u/Leposurip 16h ago
Let's be honest here. These anti China organizations have a singular agenda and no matter what China does these organizations will find a way to blame China since that is their entire goal for existing.
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u/Pexkokingcru 17h ago
Thanks for acknowledging that this entire article is based on "source trust me bro" and that they have given no proof
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u/Hour-Equivalent-2518 10h ago
'Colgate toothpaste is the best, cuz its says so on the box !' - reddit
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u/FourRiversSixRanges 17h ago edited 14h ago
They have contacts in Tibet.
Edit: always interesting to see the upvotes/downvotes. An hour ago, this was at +7.
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u/schmapeschmape 15h ago
if you asked me about a disaster in my area, all I could do is repeat what I read in the news.
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u/bukpockwajeacks 17h ago edited 17h ago
Did these contacts dig through 60 feet of mud to count the number of dead to determine the facts?
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u/_yotsuna_ 16h ago edited 13h ago
Decided to do a Google search of the organisation mentioning and it seems like they may have an interior ulterior motive to push a certain narrative.
Of course I'm not saying they're wrong after all I have no idea but I'm gonna take what they say with a pinch of salt until an unbiased party reports the same.
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u/FourRiversSixRanges 14h ago
What’s the interior motive?
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u/Training_Wonder_5066 14h ago
Better curtains and a nice carpet.
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u/Peripatetictyl 13h ago
Do you have an ulterior motive for not including lamps, or lighting, of any kind?
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u/mad_manifold 18h ago
“Say Tibet compaigners”.
If you spend just one minute to check Chinese media, including 30 seconds for Google Translate, you’ll see who is lying.
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u/Rich_Housing971 9h ago
Tibet campaigners in Washington, DC.
They don't even give a shit about Tibet. They're just propagandists.
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u/FourRiversSixRanges 17h ago
What is being said vs. what isn’t being said?
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u/LukelearMissile 14h ago
Just my two cents as an American with a Chinese mainland friend group, but they know exactly the same things everyone else does, if not more. It's massive news there. It's all over Rednote, Douyin, and WeChat. I don't get what the guy in the article is saying about the party acting like there's no disaster? Public officials have commented regularly.
Friends have even shown me heartbreaking footage and news articles I haven't seen anywhere else. For example: videos of people that were basically compacted into meat cubes due to rushing water crushing them with vehicles. Angles of footage I haven't seen anywhere else. Interviews with locals I haven't seen anywhere else.
We've talked about the tragedy at length and at no point did I get the impression they were getting the wool pulled over their eyes or being fed a censored or sterile version of events.
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u/MrStoccato 12h ago
It's basically recycled anti-China propaganda that hardly anyone believes anymore. The Tibet Campaigners saw the flood and they saw an opportunity to promote Tibetan independence, they didn't see the floods and the efforts made to save Tibetans by the Chinese.
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u/Sleeping_Bat 18h ago
China is concealing everything. It's kinda what they do.
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u/green_flash 16h ago
Absolutely. They'll conceal as much as humanly possible.
On the other hand, if you look at a map, the possible fallout on the Tibetan side of the border is limited. The flood definitely also traveled upstream from the border post into Tibet for a bit, but the downstream areas are obviously much more affected.
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u/green_flash 16h ago
Also, most of the casualties on the Tibetan side will ultimately have been swept downstream into Nepal with the flood waters. That could be the reason they report hundreds missing, but very few dead, I suppose.
Not even sure if there will be any cross-border identification of the dead. Can't imagine China letting Tibetans travel to Nepal for that purpose.
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u/hextreme2007 6h ago
Yeah, right. And I've seen people accusing China "concealing evidence" by censoring the viral videos of the Gyirong Port being destroyed by the flood on national television.
I wonder if these people enjoying seeing large amount of people's deaths on the screen over and over again. They probably need to see a psychiatrist.
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u/Evatelypapri 18h ago edited 18h ago
"says US government think tank employees located in Washington DC" would be a more accurate headline.
Not to mention, she gives zero evidence
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u/HongKongNinja 18h ago
I’m not defending the CCP or anything (I have to say this, otherwise someone will inevitably come along and call me a CCP bot or whatever). I think China was just putting it more diplomatically “We only found 16 bodies. There are still 546 bodies that haven’t been found, and we may never find them.” After all, an entire border checkpoint building was swept away. What chance did individual human beings have?
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u/Charming_Beyond3639 13h ago
“Tibet campaigners” 🤡 then when you look it up its a US state dept funded “ngo” 🤡🤡
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u/eternalgrad 10h ago
So an advocacy group funded by the NED (ex CIA) based in Washington D.C., says China is concealing things on this and some of you are gullible in believing this? China’s rescue and aid relief efforts are all over their news, network, and socials. It is even all over regular Tik Tok; though, now the US has their gimped Oracle Tik Tok that is filtered (censored).
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u/momentslove 16h ago
China is concealing the fact that they are concealing the truth about them concealing the act of concealing their ways of concealing everything.
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u/KloneRr 17h ago
More anti China propaganda
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u/MrStoccato 12h ago
Looking at the rest of the comments, you can tell people are tired of hearing about it and the lack of evidence from the article isn't helping. The propaganda has been recycled so many times, it's hard to believe it.
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u/7Thanks 17h ago
China wants “social stability”, which means CCP stability. They don’t want Chinese to question the efficacy of their governance.
Not sure why so many people in the comments are dismissing the article when it’s been supported by other sources, including BBC interviews with reports on the ground.
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u/Magapinetr 17h ago edited 16h ago
it’s been supported by other sources, including BBC interviews with reports on the ground.
How can there be BBC interviews with reports on the ground when BBC claims they aren't permitted in the area?
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u/schmapeschmape 15h ago
I am wary of the article because:
- There is a definite anti China bias of western news outlets
- The sham reporting of the genocide of uyghurs in xinjiang was so widespread and grossly inaccurate. It taught me to always be wary of western reporting of China.
That's how it works. People/organizations get caught lying and exaggerating once and they lose credibility.
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u/ExaSarus 15h ago
Follow the money..... who owns this news orgs and who benefits from this narrative. Don't be a gullible sheep its 2026 you can look at both sides of the story with a little research
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u/Rich_Housing971 9h ago
including BBC interviews with reports on the ground.
you're acting like the BBC isn't well-known for slinging anti-China shit. The "But at what cost" meme came from them.
They also pointed to a school in Xinjiang and called it a concentration camp, despite it clearly having a sign showing that it's a school. Then China gave them access to the school and they themselves went in and discovered it was a school.
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u/Mr_K_Boom 16h ago
Honestly who would blame CCP for such a sudden natural disaster tho. In the depth of mountains no less.
But yeah.... No way we going to get the tru clear data from them anyway
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u/7Thanks 16h ago
No one is blaming the CCP for the natural disaster. The critique has to do with china’s response to it.
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u/schmapeschmape 15h ago
"Beijing has launched a massive rescue operation involving hundreds of emergency workers, which is continuing, and President Xi Jinping chaired an emergency meeting with officials to co-ordinate efforts."
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u/IndieDevLove 13h ago
My timeline is full with a giant chinese rescue/recovery effort spanning km long rows of heavy machinery, Chinese social media is full of clips of the disaster and individual stories of affected people but somehow china is doing something bad and nefarious. Daily you see the western journalists lie, twist the truth, or omit important details, yet their words still somehow count. I dont get how people can get so brainwashed so easily.
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u/Sir-Frogsalot 11h ago
yeah, reddit is a very biased in favour of western media, as if our news agencies are the only source to be trusted and everything else is propaganda eventhough they have been caught lying again and again.
The are always many sides of the story.
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u/TheMailerDaemonLives 17h ago
Of course they fucking are
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u/HubrisOfApollo 17h ago
anyone who saw the videos of the wall of muddy water slamming into everything knows the devastation is way worse that they are claiming
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u/IndieDevLove 13h ago
What the fuck are they claiming that is not in accordance with reality? They claim 3 dead and 500 missing. What is wrong with this claim? Looking at the sat images, the only Chinese area affected is the border stations, and roughly 500 people there sounds right. Are you confused why they only talk about missing instead of dead? It’s probably because the 500 are literally under half a mountain and will remain missing
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u/lyghtmyfyre 16h ago
Anyone who saw the videos see that only the port was hit on the Chinese/ Tibetan side. There are no settlements between the origin of the flood to the port, and then it enters Nepal
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u/koolaidismything 17h ago
One of the biggest signs of immaturity in anything is an unwillingness to admit there’s a problem and/or digging head into the sand.
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u/Magapinetr 16h ago
That would be people automatically believing the media without doing any fact checking.
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u/Orangecuppa 16h ago
Yeah. Fucking China couldn't contain covid news spreading. And their firewall censorship is a joke. Anyone who has gone to China before knows how easy it is to install a vpn, literally a click of a button.
Foreign residents would be blasting news update of whatever cover up is there
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u/permanentmarker1 18h ago
We all saw it
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u/MrStoccato 12h ago
Yup, if you watch CCTV (Chinese Central TV, basically the state's news channels) the news of the flood is all over the news. It's all over Douyin, Rednote, and every other Chinese social media.
It's not hidden or concealed.
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u/stdstaples 10h ago
We are in 2026, it’s pretty clear to anyone with a brain that which side is truly lying and concealing about what’s happening in China, give it a rest. These stupid propaganda machines are wasting money from taxpayers.
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u/KiwiWaterBoy 18h ago
Weird to conceal a natural disaster. Not like they could control it. What is there to be internationally embarrassed over? Planning settlements in places susceptible to the hazard, before there was any actual land use planning and documented natural hazards information?
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u/schmapeschmape 15h ago
Are you suggesting China is concealing a natural disaster? I saw footage of China's foreign ministry press conference yesterday. The foreign press asked the press secretary about missing Chinese nationals and he said hundreds were missing.
I saw this with my own two eyes.
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u/tweakwerker 18h ago
Except this is all over Chinese social media and being reported on state media. Western journalists about to pull a muscle with the stretching they are doing.
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u/DrawingDramatic1641 18h ago
there isn't the news isn't trustworthy
how does indian network written by white guy knows about number of missing people in region where china is
it's always the numbers must be higher than what china says
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u/IndieDevLove 13h ago
This tells you more about the state of US propaganda that the state of chinese information policy. You notice yourself that is not making logical sense, yet you believe it still.
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u/chrustyclar 17h ago
I have a memory from a few years back
the official line being something like 5 people died.
Memory must not be so good because you can look it up and they said like 160+ died.
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u/No-Snow-7618 17h ago
also cultural differences. china counts deaths upwards and then missing after. elsewhere it’s a broad estimate first.
edit: read the article, 16 missing and the rest 500ish is missing, so probably wait a few days for a bureaucrat to rubber stamp the numbers
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u/prime_alki 18h ago
It’s just their thing, a meteor could hit a town and they’ll still tell everyone everything is normal in town and mind their business
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u/mpastaways 18h ago
Nothing could happen there and these "news" orgs would find a way to make something to rile people up knowing readers won't bother checking what they are told.
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u/TheKanten 13h ago
Concealing the scale of a disaster doesn't sound anything like China since 2019.
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u/haixiang623 10h ago
china bad, again.
The propaganda of the Western liberals remains as vigorous as ever.
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u/refused26 10h ago
Are Western nonliberals saying China good? Because I haven't heard that from both sides.
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17h ago edited 17h ago
[deleted]
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u/schmapeschmape 15h ago
You don't have any proof this is what is happening in response to this disaster. I just opened Rednote and there are stories and images of the Tibet flood all over it.
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u/dragon_idli 1h ago
I don't trust chineese state controlled news/media reports.
But I don't even know who these Tibet campaigers fk are in usa.
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u/FlibbleA 1h ago
This article quotes one of these campaigners saying the villages "Sale, Serchung, Labi and Rizi – were among the hardest hit, with approximately 300 homes reportedly destroyed and many people still missing.” I looked these villages up on google earth.
I think this is a total lie. Look at this before and after video of the flood on the border.. Top center is a river, one of the villages is off screen next to that river. In the video you can see a village to the left of that river with mountain roads. To the South West there is another one of these village with mountain roads around it. South West from there is the border crossing everyone has seen that got wiped out.
Now check the after. The flood doesn't touch those villages because they are not next to the river and the valley is very steep so the villages are high up. The flood also doesn't go up that river towards the other village. So the idea these villages were the hardest hit and 300 homes were destroyed seems completely made up.
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u/5kyl3r 14h ago
chinese media showed their rescue-larpers in spotlessly clean clothes and equipment while the tibetan side was completely covered in mud from head to toe. pretty clear which side we should trust on this one
not to mention we all saw a significantly larger number of people in those CCTV videos than china's TOTAL count. there's virtually no way people in those videos survived, the water basically wiped that entire town off of the map
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u/gravitysort 7h ago
we all saw a significantly larger number of people in those CCTV videos than china's TOTAL count
show me how you counted more than 546 (missing) + 16 (deceased) people in those 2 CCTV clips at the border crossing, i'll wait.
while the tibetan side was completely covered in mud from head to toe
ughhh, the chinese rescue crew is on the tibetan side, you know that right?
chinese media showed their rescue-larpers in spotlessly clean clothes and equipment
#1 Deutsche Welle #2 Al Jazeera
here are your rescue-larpers in spotlessly clean clothes and equipment
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i can't fathom how many lies can be packed into 2 paragraphs of reddit comment but you managed to show some really good work.
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