Beijing floods leave 37 dead A freak storm in China's capital killed at least 37 people over the weekend, sparking anger and questions over poor infrastructure in the world's second-largest economy. The violent rainstorm - the worst Beijing has seen in more than six decades, according to city authorities - dumped an average of 17cm of rain on the Chinese capital on Saturday. Flash floods temporarily paralysed the city, shutting down most transportation and leaving 80,000 people stranded at the airport on Saturday night. Most of Beijing was dry and functioning well by Sunday morning, which some residents said was proof that the city handled the floods well. But others saw the floods as evidence of Beijing's failure to upgrade its drainage systems despite the billions of renminbi spent beautifying and improving the capital in recent years. "Rather than condolences, what I feel is anger," wrote one user on Sina Weibo, China's equivalent to Twitter. "We are paying for the problems in urban construction and management with human lives," wrote another. This price is too high. China's breakneck economic growth has been punctuated by tragic accidents that underscore the poor quality of much of the infrastructure that is being built. Many Chinese internet users drew a parallel between the flooding deaths in Beijing and the high-speed train crash in Wenzhou, in which 40 people died after a collision on the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed line. Monday marks the one-year anniversary of that accident, but coverage has been banned in Chinese media, extending earlier bans on articles about the sensitive subject. The Beijing storm, by contrast, was widely covered and state-run media did not refrain from criticising the way it had been handled. "If so much chaos can be triggered in Beijing, the capital of the nation, problems in urban infrastructure of many other places can only be worse," said an editorial in the English-language Global Times. The poorer, outlying areas around Beijing were among the most severely affected by flooding. Rescue efforts continued on Monday in the southwestern district of Fangshan which received as much as 46cm of rain in some places, and authorities said the death toll there could rise significantly. As of Monday morning, the official death toll stood at 37 people. Of those, 25 drowned, one was struck by lightning, five were electrocuted, and six were killed by collapsed buildings, according to city authorities.