By John Pomfret
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, August 12, 1998; Page A17

BEIJING, Aug. 11—The Communist Party issued an emergency circular today that called on police and other security personnel to maintain order in the wide swath of central China being ravaged by the nation's worst floods in 44 years.

The order, from the Political Science and Law Committee of the party's Central Committee, was a blunt indication that lawlessness, looting and concerted opposition to the government's policy of displacing millions of people is rising as the situation intensifies along the banks of the Yangtze River.

The government has announced that more than 2,000 people have died, 13.8 million people have been rendered homeless, and 240 million people -- almost equal to the population of the United States -- have been affected indirectly by the floods that began last month. Chinese officials have said that the floods are the nation's worst deluge since 1954, when 30,000 people died along the Yangtze's treacherous banks.

The government said today that the disaster was partly to blame for another slight slip in the country's industrial growth rate. Government officials said the high waters have affected 53 million acres of farmland and destroyed 11 million acres of crops. The bad news seems to support the prevalent view that China's economy, buffeted by the Asian financial crisis and natural calamities, is slipping steadily.

And if the trouble along the Yangtze were not enough, new floods are raging in northeastern China, state-run media reported today. The floods, around the city of Qiqihar near China's border with Mongolia, are "the worst floods in the history" of the Nen River, the People's Daily said. Dozens of people have died in that region as heavy rains have caused the Nen and its tributaries to overflow their banks.

Twenty million people -- both People's Liberation Army soldiers and civilians -- are laboring round-the-clock to fight the high waters in central China. The nightly news and other news programs are filled with dramatic images of soldiers sprinting with sandbags, clinging to trees as fast waters seek to pull them to death and helping civilians stranded on isolated spits of land as water roils around them. One program showed several clips of wet nurses feeding breast milk to soldiers in cups and rubbing it on their bodies in an effort to prevent troops from catching waterborne diseases. Chinese believe that human milk can cure many ailments.

So far, there have been no pictures of the massive refugee camps that have been set up in the Yangtze basin for the millions of people displaced by the storms. In some places, 300,000 people have been ousted from their homes as the government tries to protect cities along the Yangtze's banks by flooding the countryside.

Opposition to this policy appears to be growing along the Yangtze. State-run media reported Sunday that dikes were blown up in Jianli county, 150 miles upstream from the industrial center of Wuhan, after 50,000 residents were evacuated from their homes. The official New China News Agency said Jianli's dikes would have been dynamited Saturday if not for local opposition to the plan. "Some local villagers were reluctant to" leave their homes, the report said.

A news agency report last week said looting had broken out in Hunan following the floods. Peasants, who were given only hours to flee their homes, put valuables up in trees, which were then plucked away by enterprising crooks, the report said.

The party's order today demanded that units of the militia, the People's Armed Police and other security units "increase night and day patrols" to maintain order. It commanded security services to deal harshly with criminals who "take advantage of suffering and steal," "who illegally salvage property belonging to refugees, the state or collectives," "who confuse and poison people's minds" and who sell needed products at extortionate prices.

It called on security services to secure train and bus stations, ports and other transportation hubs as well as warehouses.

Floods traditionally devastate central China during the summer months. This year they are unusually severe because of a high rainfall and because peasants have reclaimed for farming millions of acres of what used to be flood plains and watershed from the banks of rivers and lakes.

Premier Zhu Rongji took advantage of the flood drama today to push a radical plan -- which he has been working on since he was appointed to his post in March -- to reduce widespread clear-cutting throughout China, which has caused serious erosion and contributed to the deadly deluges.

The State Council, China's cabinet, said police and other authorities would enforce the order and that government officials and enterprises responsible for authorizing deforestation in the past would be held "responsible."