Typhoon Bavi Threatens China as 5,000 Students Evacuated From Guangxi Floods
China is confronting a compounding natural disaster crisis as Typhoon Bavi barrels toward the eastern coast while more than 5,000 students rescued from catastrophic flooding in Guangxi have safely returned home. The back-to-back extreme weather events are straining emergency response systems and raising fears of further devastation across more than a dozen provinces.
Guangxi Flooding: A Rescue Operation Concludes
Typhoon Maysak triggered persistent extreme rainfall in Guangxi’s Guigang City starting July 4, trapping over 10,000 students and teachers across multiple schools. Floodwaters at the hardest-hit schools reached approximately 7 meters (23 feet) deep, submerging campuses at Guigang Senior High School, Guangxi Logistics Vocational College, and an international school housing more than 4,000 boarding students, according to People’s Daily.
The People’s Liberation Army, armed police, fire rescue teams, and China Anneng rescue forces deployed inflatable boats and an emergency “power ferry bridge” — an 8-meter-wide, 7-section mobile water platform — to evacuate stranded students. On July 9 alone, over 5,000 students were transported from Guigang Station to their hometowns across China via high-speed rail.
“Yesterday the station transferred over 500 students; today that number has risen to more than 5,000,” said Guigang Station Master Yu Yongjun. Teacher Deng from Guangxi Logistics Vocational College added: “The students were just rescued, their phones are dead. They just want to get to the high-speed rail station, quickly let their families know they’re safe, and take the train home.”
The Yu River experienced its first flood of 2026 on July 6, with the crest at Guigang reaching 46.88 meters on July 7 — 5.68 meters above the warning level and the highest since 2001. Guigang City raised its flood prevention emergency response to Level 1 on July 7. At least four deaths and eight missing have been reported in Hengzhou, Guangxi, including a woman who died from snakebite after a snake farm was destroyed by floodwaters.
Typhoon Bavi: A “Behemoth” Approaches
As rescue operations in Guangxi wind down, a new threat is rapidly approaching. Super Typhoon Bavi, the 9th named storm of the 2026 Pacific typhoon season, is forecast to make landfall early on July 12 between Zhejiang’s Sanmen and Fujian’s Fuding, according to Xinhua News Agency.
Bavi has exhibited unusual meteorological characteristics. Formed on July 2, it rapidly intensified from a tropical storm to a super typhoon in just two days, reaching peak intensity on July 4 with maximum sustained winds of 62 m/s (223 km/h). It maintained super typhoon status for an extraordinary 138 hours — a rare duration. The China Weather Network describes Bavi’s circulation cloud system as a “behemoth among typhoons,” with a diameter exceeding 1,500 km.
As of July 11, Bavi had re-intensified to a severe typhoon with maximum winds of 14 (41.5-46.1 m/s), located approximately 460 km east-southeast of the Zhejiang-Fujian border and moving northwest at 30-35 km/h. It is expected to be the strongest typhoon to make landfall in China in 2026.
Widespread Impact Expected
China’s meteorological authorities have issued multiple high-level warnings, including a Typhoon Orange Warning, a Rainstorm Red Warning (the highest level), a Severe Convective Weather Yellow Warning, and a Geological Disaster Meteorological Risk Red Warning. The storm is expected to affect over a dozen provinces including Taiwan, Fujian, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Hubei, Anhui, Jiangsu, Henan, Shandong, Hebei, Beijing, Tianjin, Liaoning, and Jilin.
Meteorologists are comparing Bavi to 2019’s Typhoon Lekima, which caused devastating damage across eastern China. After landfall, Bavi is expected to interact with multiple weather systems, including cold air from the north, potentially prolonging rainfall across a vast area.
Analysis: A Test of Resilience
The back-to-back disasters raise serious concerns about compounding flood risks. Many regions in central and eastern China that may receive heavy rain from Bavi were already saturated by previous rainfall events. Emergency response resources mobilized for Guangxi may need to be rapidly redeployed for Bavi’s impact zone.
These consecutive extreme weather events — record flooding followed by a super typhoon — fit broader patterns of increasing frequency and intensity of extreme weather linked to climate change. The Guangxi flooding has also exposed vulnerabilities in urban drainage, dam safety, and emergency communications that may require long-term investment.
What to Watch For
Typhoon Bavi is expected to make landfall in the early hours of July 12. The key concerns in the coming days will be whether Bavi’s rainfall exacerbates flooding in areas already saturated by previous storms, and how China’s emergency response capacity holds up under the strain of managing concurrent disasters. The full extent of casualties and economic damage from the Guangxi floods also remains to be determined.