The government on Sunday initiated a level-IV emergency response, and despatched teams to cope with the serious drought in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

The autonomous region has seen average precipitation of 104.9 mm since the beginning of July, a 54-year record low for the period.

A total of 3.6 million people have been affected by the drought, with more than 1 million people deemed at high risk, according to local authorities. Large swathes of crop land have been affected and direct economic losses have been estimated at 6.5 billion yuan (about 1.02 bln U.S. dollars ).

Local authorities allocated 30 million yuan for drought relief and are digging wells and cloud seeding to reduce the region's losses.