China's Hainan Satellite Exploded! Shanghai Submerged and Turned into a Sea, Little Pinks Weep Bitterly: Taiwan Donated to Japan but Won't Help the Mainland — No One Dares Speak the Real Reason

The video focuses on the failed launch of the Long March 7A rocket in Hainan and the flooding caused by a typhoon in the Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Shanghai regions. It covers the cancellation of flights in Shanghai and the flooding of shopping malls and residential areas, while citing Chinese urban drainage design standards, expert opinions, and data on impermeable surfaces to discuss the causes of waterlogging. It then compares the accountability and public opinion environments in Taiwan and China regarding natural disasters, analyzing phenomena such as disasters being categorized as acts of God, the erasure of public memory, and the lack of channels for public expression.

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Something big has happened. Last night at 8:02, thousands of spectators and Chinese tourists on the viewing platform in Hainan Island watched the motherland's rocket launch, with cheers erupting at the scene. Ninety seconds into the "far ahead" flight, bang, a giant fireball appeared in the sky. At that moment, people didn't realize it had exploded, thinking it was a scheduled fireworks show, but that was a Long March 7A rocket. That same day, the state-run Xinhua News Agency admitted it in eight characters: "Rocket flight abnormal, launch mission failed, but basically successful." The satellite that exploded this time cost nearly 3.2 billion RMB.

Meanwhile, during the same weekend, Typhoon Ampil was harassing China and is now approaching Hubei, Wuhan, and Yichang. It shouldn't cause the Three Gorges Dam to collapse, as it has become a very, very mild typhoon, right? This Typhoon Ampil bypassed Taiwan and made landfall in the Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Shanghai regions on the afternoon of August 9, causing hundreds of people to be evacuated. In Shanghai alone, 2,500 flights were canceled.

This typhoon, which downgraded from moderate to mild, is shattering the "gilded on the outside" narrative built by the CCP. For example, in many parts of Jiangsu, such as Wuxi's airport, shopping malls and streets everywhere were severely flooded. I've been to Wuxi, and in local places like the Zhangjiagang Shopping Center, water poured directly inside. The cars inside the Xpeng Motors 4S dealership in the mall all broke through the glass doors to go "dragon boat racing" on their own.

Friends in Jiangsu and Zhejiang also filmed several buildings, including some in Taizhou. Why were the glass, houses, and tiles of these seemingly high-end communities blown into such a mess? Some places in Fujian were also flooded into a mess, one or two stories deep. And those filmed by netizens were high-end residential areas, houses worth millions or even tens of millions of RMB.

Then we come to the top priority, Shanghai, the face of China. Wukang Road in Xuhui District, the most photogenic street in Shanghai where many influencers go to check in, became a vast ocean. Shanghai turned into a sea, with underground garages flooded and shopping malls accumulating a lot of water. There were also influencer bloggers who posted headlines saying: Look, even luxury homes worth 500 million are soaked in water.

Have you all noticed? Every single place and province I just mentioned is not some remote, impoverished backwoods; none of them are like the area around the Liulan Reservoir in Guangxi, right? These are all major cities. Compared to rural areas, they are basically the newest, most expensive, and most prestigious ones, right? Didn't most of these things only come into existence at most ten to twenty years ago? Let's cap it at thirty years at the absolute most, alright? Taiwan has had these for fifty or sixty years.

Now, let's get back to that rocket. But before I talk about that, I need to address something, because there are bound to be Little Pinks and people with that "pigs can fly" mentality acting all self-righteous: "Taiwan Province doesn't even have rockets, what right do you have to mock others?" First of all, you've made two mistakes. First, you've advocated for Taiwanese independence. Second, listen to me finish first before you bring up your second point.

Strictly speaking, Taiwan hasn't aggressively pushed for treating rockets as a symbol of national power. But where is the symbol of our national power today? In chips. If our chips were to crash today, I would fully accept the scathing criticism of Chinese netizens, and I want to make it clear: China's aerospace strength is indeed better than Taiwan's, because that is a direction you have constantly strived to research, whereas this is not our strong suit, right?

Before this explosion of the Long March 7A, it was its 18th flight, having succeeded 16 consecutive times. Tianlian 3 01 was just sent up at the end of last month, right? Taiwan truly cannot accomplish these things, and I won't pretend that Taiwan can, right? But China should compare itself with China. In the same country, in the same month, you can send 7 tons of payload into geostationary orbit, yet you let Guangxi, Shanghai, the Northeast, Sichuan, Hubei, Guangdong—I probably can't finish naming them all—suffer from severe flooding reaching up to the third story of buildings. Don't you think there is a gap here that requires some self-reflection?

Rocket explosions can be categorized as a technical issue, resulting from a multitude of links failing together. Everyone can discuss it from scratch and say we are troubleshooting, because this won't point to any specific person who needs to take responsibility. But flooding is different; flooding points to specific names: the person who approved the budget, the person who signed off on the inspection, the person who didn't replace the pipelines for 10 or 20 years, and the person who took the funding yet still wrote "no more seeing the sea by 2025" into official documents.

So the real rule isn't that nothing can be discussed, but rather that when a failure occurs that won't harm the Zhao family, you can talk about it. Alright, now let's get to the core issue. After all, many Taiwanese viewers who haven't studied Chinese society, and even tourists, will definitely think: China has so many tall buildings, such beautiful light shows, and high-speed rail lines built so long, how could it possibly flood just from a rainstorm? It must be an AI-generated video, right? I suppose most people would think that.

Why? We cannot deny that we are all visual creatures, right? This includes Taobao goods as well; their appearance looks just like major Western brands, yet the price is less than a tenth, which is why I buy Taobao goods. But in reality, after you actually buy most of them, your bodily sensation from long-term use—including durability, friction against the skin, whether it causes itching, comfort, and breathability—this quality is indeed inferior to major brands.

So of course I looked it up, and China's answer was already written in its design standards, which were published by the Chinese Communist Party itself. According to China's outdoor drainage design code, the design recurrence period for rainstorms in general urban areas is once every 1 to 3 years, for key areas it is once every 3 to 5 years, and for particularly important areas it is once every 10 years. Do you all understand what this means? It means this drainage pipe was designed precisely to flood on you once every 3 years. And what about others? China's maximum is once every 10 years, while the UK is once every 30 years.

And what I'm going to talk about next comes from someone inside the Chinese system itself: Cheng Xiaotao, deputy chief engineer at the China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research. He is not a foreign hostile force. During a relatively open period, when asked by a reporter whether current pipelines could withstand a once-in-a-decade rainstorm, he casually replied: "Impossible, and we can't do it right now either."

Professor Gong Yongwei from Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture explained it in more detail. He said that the rainwater pipelines in early Chinese cities could only handle rainfall events that occur once every six months to a year, and in recent years, typical pipelines can at most handle once every two to five years. But you must note that this still does not include flood discharge. Look at Shanghai, this mild typhoon has already resulted in this situation. If today we were to build a few reservoirs like those in Guangxi near Shanghai's location, what do you think Shanghai would look like today? Because according to the typical nature of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), they will definitely discharge floods, right? Moreover, this professor added a most important sentence: even if the rainfall does not exceed the design standards, urban waterlogging may still occur due to unreasonable planning, incomplete construction, and untimely maintenance.

Where is another structural problem? China's Yicai reported on August 7 this year: from 1985 to 2024, in the Beijing-Tianjin region, including the impermeable areas within major city clusters such as the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl Dragon River Delta, the area increased from 22,500 square kilometers to 69,300 square kilometers, spanning over 300 cities. In plain language, this means the ground has entirely turned into concrete roads, and rainwater has nowhere to seep down, forcing it to rely entirely on a pipeline designed for a 1-to-3-year return period, while during this period you also have to ensure that the major reservoirs upstream from you do not discharge floods.

Well, does the CCP know about this? Of course it does, because it was designed and built by itself. In 2021, the information released by the CCP State Council was about implementation measures and opinions on strengthening urban waterlogging governance, and the working text in black and white stated that by 2025, new urban areas should no longer experience the phenomenon of urban sea-watching. This points out a problem: has the CCP long seen many cities turning into seas, right? Otherwise, why would you propose this point? But now it is already August 2026. Guangxi and Guangdong—those places that are frequently flooded, I don't even want to mention them—even the businesses, shops, and some streets in Shanghai were flooded up to the waist.

So we want to explore why China floods every year, yet year after year no Chinese people take to the streets to protest and supervise the government? Why do Chinese people feel this matter is completely normal, while Taiwanese people feel it is abnormal?

The entire jewelry cabinet fell over, and the bags were all flooded. Right now, I am... I can no longer go inside; it's already like this. You say I really have no other way. This is the eighth year of entrepreneurship, and this is the first time in my life that I am going out of business not because of poor management. It has already flooded to the third floor, and I can no longer go down. Everything is gone, and I have to start all over again.

When we first tried to understand this matter, what we couldn't understand the most was not the flooding, but the reaction of the Chinese people. It floods every year, videos are filmed every year, it trends on search lists every year, it gets uploaded to overseas websites every year, and then people are told not to hand knives to foreign hostile forces. And then? It seems no one steps down, and no one is consulted. Did those provincial governors, mayors, and county magistrates in Guangxi step down? No. Did the municipal party secretary step down? Also no. No county magistrate came out to lead everyone, even just for disaster relief for a day or two, to make the public feel a sense of shared experience. What are the characters used for the reaction of most people in China? Natural disasters.

But if today Taiwan were to flood to just 30% the scale of China's recent event—just 30% would suffice: shopping malls in Taichung being completely inundated, half a floor, a whole floor, basements flooded to the maximum, food courts flooded, luxury mansions in Xinyi District submerged in water, and Chiayi City, Miaoli City, and Zhongli District flooded up to three stories high, soaking for more than half a month. The military comes for disaster relief for three to five days and then leaves, and they still have to raise the flag of the Republic of China and sing "Night Raid," with the distant stars and moon dim. How many days do you think Taiwan's central government could survive?

Why is it that, despite being part of the so-called Chinese-speaking sphere with mostly the same ancestral origins and the same typhoons, the reactions of China and Taiwan are so vastly different? Well, I have roughly summarized a few reasons, and I hope you can compare them.

The script that most Chinese people have watched in their lifetime is flooding, flood control, commendation meetings, and doing it all over again next year. Heaven wants to destroy us, so we must rise against the trend in defiance. Because our Chinese nation has always suffered through hardships this way, everyone dislikes seeing us do well, so we must do even better. They have never experienced a mayor stepping down because of floods, followed by the improvement of the flood-prone environment—progressing from flooding one floor to half a floor, and finally down to calves and ankles, slowly improving step by step. No, they do not have this version, so in their minds, this is not an option, and such a thing does not exist; they are simply unable to imagine it.

Don't tell me that those who circumvent the Great Firewall see things clearly; compared to the base of 1.4 billion people in China, that is a very small fraction.

Second, the narrative has been swapped; it has shifted from accountability to being moved. Look at the headlines in the CCP's state media; they are always about 'going against the current,' 'standing firm,' 'the soldiers,' 'volunteers,' and 'red vests.' A disaster is translated into a 'moving ceremony,' and when you are moved, no one needs to be held responsible.

Next, there is the term 'natural disaster,' which acts as a disclaimer. A rainstorm is a natural disaster, but a city that cannot drain its water is a man-made disaster, and a city that discharges floodwater indiscriminately is also a man-made disaster. What the CCP does is bind these two things together, just as it binds itself to China and the Chinese nation. Once they are stuck together, responsibility vanishes, because you cannot blame the heavens.

Then, memories are wiped clean. Where did you see those images of the flooding? For the most part, what remains in the end is mostly overseas, outside the Great Firewall, right? Even if you manage to post it in the moment, if you look back after a while, isn't it gone? Hasn't it been throttled? Hasn't it been ignored? Everyone has forgotten again. Yes, and inside the Great Firewall, it gets posted and deleted once this year, and posted and deleted again next year. So, for them, the flooding every year feels like the first time, because they cannot see the rural areas in other provinces that are flooded even worse, as no record was left from the last time. A society without memory will not have cumulative improvement or anger.

Finally, the most realistic aspect: anger has no outlet. If your home is flooded, who do you hold responsible? There is no opposition party to help you, no opposition party or ruling party that can help you. No journalist dares to question the authorities with a narrative different from the central government, and no court exists where you can sue the local reservoir or the municipal government. You might even be attacked or censored online for speaking out. So, feeling that this is 'normal' is not because the Chinese people are stupid, nor because they are indifferent; it is because they have realized that in this society, this is just how it is—what else can you do? Over time, it becomes a habit.

And humans are animals that seek comfort and avoid pain. When you find that anger is useless, your brain automatically helps you reinterpret the situation to make you feel better: 'It's just a natural disaster, what else can you do? Just be content.'

Now, the next part is even stranger, and I know many Taiwanese still don't understand it. Even when they are flooded to such an extent, if you look at the comment sections, there is always a group of people who come to say that Taiwan is flooded up to the ankles, which is 'worse' than their three-story-high flooding. Why? Because I have thought about it for a long time, and the answer may not be in politics, but in the heart.

When a person cannot improve their own environment and cannot blame those in power, they only have one path left to make themselves feel better: to prove that someone else who isn't at 100 points is the same as them at 20 points. Because as long as the other person isn't at 100 points, then their own endurance isn't cowardice, and you aren't courageous; therefore, you are the same as them, everyone is the same. Then they don't have to face the painful question: 'Have I been treated unfairly?'

Everyone, this is actually not far away at all; this is human nature. Many people get scolded by their boss, and most people need to keep their salary, so they won't talk back, even if the supervisor is wrong. So who do you scold when you get home? You scold your boyfriend, you pick a fight with him because you just want to argue, right? You hit your wife, scold your wife, kick your dog or cat, or be mean to a delivery driver. This is called displaced aggression, standard human equipment, regardless of nationality.

But why is it specifically Taiwan? Because the most ironic thing about Taiwan is that it serves as a control group. In their view, it is the same culture, the same race, the same language, and even the same country, right? In their eyes, they celebrate the same festivals. So, with the same typhoon, Taiwan's existence proves one thing that they least want to admit: that the so-called Chinese society or Chinese nation in the Chinese-speaking world can have a different way of living. After a flood, someone can step down, someone can be held responsible, and the flooding can get shallower year after year.

So when they curse Taiwan, it's not because Taiwanese people are enemies; it's because Taiwan is living proof. As long as Taiwan stands right there, that's destiny—those few words. That hurts infinitely less than admitting you've been wronged, right? That's why the people who tend to spew the most hatred at Taiwan are precisely the ones who have been hurt the most and have nowhere to speak out.

That's why rockets launching into the sky make for good footage, while drainage pipes buried underground do not. Skyscraper toppings and light shows can have ribbon-cuttings, but underground pipeline maintenance cannot. The dazzling light shows in Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Chongqing can make the evening news and make foreigners feel that China is far ahead, but digging up twenty- or thirty-year-old rusted pipes to replace them can't make the news, and ordinary people can't see or touch it in their daily lives. Construction is a political achievement; maintenance is a cost. Building something new gets someone promoted; repairing something old gets no one promoted.

So you end up seeing a scene that is completely absurd yet entirely logical: major cities upgrade their light shows year after year, while the river water alongside them and the reservoirs upstream flood in year after year.