China issues first drought alert, battles to save crops in extreme heatwave

But heavy rainfall in Liaoning province has damaged crop output

China has issued its first national drought alert of the year as authorities battle forest fires and mobilise specialist teams to protect crops from scorching temperatures across the Yangtze river basin.

The national ‘yellow alert’, issued late on Thursday, comes after regions from Sichuan in the southwest to Shanghai in the Yangtze delta have experienced weeks of extreme heat, with government officials repeatedly citing global climate change as the cause. The alert is two notches short of the most serious warning on Beijing's scale.

In one of the Yangtze’s important flood basins in central China's Jiangxi province, the Poyang Lake has now