Receding floodwaters revealed devastation across some of China's most fertile croplands Tuesday as stunned peasant families and harried local officials began to assess the costs of the disaster.
Official news reports said water levels in the Upper Yangtze River and the Huaihe River had started to drop as heavy rains gave way to gentle drizzle and, in some cases, blue sky.The respite gave people a chance to see how much they had already lost to the catastrophe, which one Chinese scientist blamed on global warming.
Overall details about total losses remain sketchy.
China said last week more than 1,300 people had been killed and direct economic losses topped $3 billion.
Foreign analysts are cautious in assessing the impact of the floods on China's harvest, saying figures are incomplete. China produced a record 504 million tons of grain in 1990, much of it ending up rotting in storehouses because of an inadequate distribution system.
Official reports said Tuesday that the eastern province of Anhui, which has suffered most in the disaster, had already experienced economic losses of more than $2.13 billion, including $1.7 billion in damage to agriculture.