Amid extreme weather, China avoids mention of climate change

EVEN A SHORT spell submerged in floodwaters is enough to transform a car into an eerie, unfamiliar object. A week after ferocious rains first battered the central province of Henan, the hulk of a white Toyota—fronds of waterweed wrapped round its buckled frame—lay on a muddy street in Mihe, a hard-hit riverside town, like a long-lost shipwreck. Just finding the car had taken several days, its owners explained. It had been carried two kilometres downstream by the Sishui river, storm-swollen into a murderous torrent many times its normal width.