China, the world’s most populous country with a vast territory and diverse climatic and geological conditions, has been subject to a wide range of natural disasters such as earthquakes, typhoons, floods, droughts, pestilence, and public health crisis since ancient times (Table 1.1). Natural disaster management had become such a life or death issue for each dynasty that neglect of such duties on the part of the ruling class would cause famine, riots, peasant rebellion, and, finally, the demise of the imperial regime (Ye 2002; Janku 2007, pp. 267–301; Wittfogel 1957). While the risks posed by disasters cannot be entirely eliminated, preparation, rescue, relief, and reconstruction are essential for minimizing immediate and long-term damage. The most important aspect of local disaster resilience, which comprises the institutions and infrastructure developed to prepare for disasters as well as the measures taken to protect the environment, is the way the country enables change through the design of local solutions to local problems (Ross 2014, p. 1). By opening such dominant political and institutional systems to scrutiny, disasters provide opportunities to observe how actors react and how structures function under stressful conditions (Kreps 1989). In the country’s 4000-year-long history and modern development, natural disaster management has been not only about human combat against devastating natural forces, but also about institutional building, political struggle, and economic interest redistribution among different institutional players. A significant payoff for political scientists studying disasters is that they can reveal much of the hidden nature of political processes and structures, particularly those in non-democracies, which are normally covered up with great care (Yi 2015, p. 14).
Table 1.1
Deadliest natural disasters in China’s history (EM-DAT 2014; Time 2010)
Event | Date | Location | Estimated death toll |
|---|---|---|---|
1931 China floods | July-August 1931 | Eastern and Northern China | 3,700,000 |
1928–1930 drought and famine | 1928–1930 | Northern China | 3,000,000 |
1959 floods | July 1959 | Eastern and Northern China | 2,000,000 |
1909 epidemic | 1909 | Northeast China | 1,500,000 |
1887 Yellow River flood | September–October 1887 | Northern China | 900,000–2,000,000 |
1556 Shaanxi earthquake | January 23, 1556 | Northwest China | 830,000 |
1920 drought | 1920 | Northern China | 500,000 |
1938 Yellow River floods | July 1938 | Northern China | 500,000 |
1976 Tangshan earthquake | July 27, 1976 | Tangshan City | 242,000 |
1920 Haiyuan earthquake | December 16, 1920 | Ningxia Province | 180,000 |
In modern days, the authoritarian Chinese government’s disaster resilience, or its capacities and processes by which various institutional and individual actors develop to prepare for, respond to, and recover from these catastrophes has been impressive in the global context of increasing disaster vulnerability exacerbated by climate change and urbanization. Despite the country’s long history of disaster relief in ancient times and formidable adaptive capacities in modern days, the party–state’s non-participatory approach managed in a top-down apparatus has been questioned by the rising political pluralism and civic activism in the era of social media and fragmentized policy making. Often portrayed as the preferred means for consolidating the non-democratic regime’s legitimacy, the state-led disaster governance nonetheless needs to more effectively respond to pluralistic politics and societal needs by empowering interest groups and social forces to articulate their expectations and priorities through public decision-making.
Against the backdrop of global climate change that has focused more research projects on national disaster governance and decentralized disaster resilience, this book has been designed to help the audience better understand the dynamic relationship among various interest groups and civic forces in modern China’s disaster politics, with special emphasis on the process of pluralization, decentralization, and fragmentation. The focus of the book has been narrowed down to naturally induced disaster management, instead of disaster management in a broader sense, which includes all types of disasters such as industrial accidents, pollution incidents, and terrorist attacks. Instead of generalized approaches adopted by most researchers that emphasize norm changes and civic participation, the book focuses on specific institutional reforms and underlining political and socioeconomic implications in this realm, with detailed analysis of China’s complicated disaster management bureaucracy and institutional arrangement.
Prolific research has touched upon the emerging civic voices in the social media era (Huberman et al. 2009, pp. 1–9; Ellison et al. 2007, pp. 1143–1168; Java et al. 2007), but not much study has been done to discuss the interaction among different stakeholders concerning disaster management within and outside the state apparatus, which covers a wide range of institutional players like the central government, local governments at various levels, ministries, the military (PLA), government-organized NGOs, companies, the media, and civil organizations. As China’s politics and society are getting more pluralistic and fragmented, this book provides vivid case studies and in-depth analysis to reveal the complexity of China’s formal and informal politics related to disaster management, in which all these interest groups and social organizations are interacting with one another in a dynamic institutional environment. Through reviewing the problems and progress in China’s disaster governance, the book tries to reveal the institutional factors in China’s political process that restrain its capacity for better disaster management.
Although a couple of books with similar topics (Yi 2015; Sakai et al. 2014; Chung 2012; Sun 2004) were published in recent years, the politics of China’s disaster management, which has been attracting growing public and scholarly interest in the new context of climate change and social media, is being severely understudied. For example, China’s thematic disaster response plans and ad hoc interagency mechanisms in dealing with different kinds of disasters have not received due attention in academic studies. Moreover, China has overhauled its disaster management system since 2011, when the new National Emergency Response Plan for Natural Disaster Relief was enacted to tackle emerging challenges. Most existing studies have failed to capture the latest institutional and norm changes related to this 2011 reform, which reinforced government dominance in relief work and reshaped central-local and state–society relationship in disaster management. Focusing on different institutional imperatives that the authoritarian rulers needed to address in different stages, the book aims to make unique contributions to new institutionalist studies of authoritarianism that help explain the Communist Party of China (CPC)’s “authoritarian resilience” (Nathan 2003, pp. 6–17).
Since disaster relief is delivered in challenging environments, and the immense organizational challenges in suddenly expanding the scope and scale of program delivery are often accompanied by pressure to deliver aid rapidly, the injection of large amounts of resources can exaggerate power imbalances and increase opportunities for corruption (Transparency International 2010, p. x). The substantial losses of donations absorbed by government-linked organizations in post-disaster phases have reflected the government’s inability to maintain its credibility, which has been severely challenged in the social media era. Rising civic demand for more participation in the rescue and relief is still suppressed by the authoritarian regime, although ordinary people have been engaging in a broad range of political action and finding a new sense of self, community, and empowerment.
China’s disaster management making has been undergoing such dramatic changes as pluralization, decentralization, and fragmentation. When China is gradually opening its disaster relief system to the outside world, the number and type of pressure groups involved are expanding substantially with most ministries at the national level, armed forces, big business entities, media, local governments, NGOs, and even individuals intertwining their interests with one another. The redistribution of fund and resources among various stakeholders has always been the core issue related to the effectiveness of disaster management. Besides the turf wars at the central level, the involvement of multi-layer local governments further aggrandizes the struggle for funds and resources in China’s disaster management. The core of this book discusses to what degree China’s system has been effective in delivering funds and resources to needy recipients, and whether new reforms could prevent substantial loss of donations and investment absorbed by government-linked organizations and individuals.
Chapter 2 gives a close look at achievement and weaknesses in ancient China’s disaster management. Historians have called such unique disaster and famine-relief governance as famine politics (huangzheng), which included policies, practices, institutions, and even theories related to the preparedness, relief, and recovery in the disaster management cycle. This chapter emphasizes complicated guidelines and institutions formalized by ancient dynasties in anticipation of and in response to natural disasters. It assesses various kinds of assistance like grain transfer and distribution, monetary grant, medical aid, control of crop price, loan, tax reduction, and migration that had been recorded in the Chinese history as an important means to relieve the people in disasters. It explains why most ancient Chinese dynasties failed to establish special government departments to manage natural disasters, and to what extent China’s modern disaster management has been influenced by its historical heritage.
Chapter 3 discusses China’s nascent modernization effort in disaster management in the Republic of China (ROC) era (1912–1949) and People’s Republic of China (PRC)’s pre-reform period (1949–1978). After the ROC took power from the monarch of the Qing Dynasty and set up its government in 1912, modernized institutions managing natural disasters were introduced with special departments appointed to take charge of relevant affairs. With a review on how the different ROC governments had tried to establish modern-style bureaucracy to manage natural disasters,...