In China’s 4,000-year-long history and modern development, natural disaster management has been about not only human combat against devastating natural forces, but also institutional building, political struggle, and economic interest redistribution among different institutional players. A significant payoff for social scientists studying disasters is that they can reveal much of the hidden nature of political and economic processes and structures, particularly those in non-democracies, which are normally covered up with great care. This book reviews the problems and progress in the politics of China’s disaster management. It analyses the factors in China’s governance and political process that restrains its capacity to manage disasters. The book helps 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.

This book shows how Chinese officials have responded to popular and international pressure, while at the same time seeking to preserve their own careers, in the context of disaster management. Using the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake as a case study, it illustrates how authoritarian regimes are creating new governance mechanisms in response to the changing global environment and what challenges they are confronted with in the process. The book examines both the immediate and long-term effects of a major disaster on China’s policy, institutions, and governing practices, and seeks to explain which factors lead to hasty and poorly conceived reconstruction efforts, which in turn reproduce the very same conditions of vulnerability or expose communities to new risks. In short, it tells a “political” story of how intra-governmental interactions, state-society relations, and international engagement can shape the processes and outcomes of recovery and reconstruction.

In this timely book about the current state of research and practice of emergency management in China, the authors take as their basic premises that we now live in a risk society and that our collective ability to deal with disasters and their aftermath is more important than ever. Set within a multi-disciplinary framework that places risk, disaster and crisis, the three phases of emergency management, on an analytical continuum, and drawing on empirical data obtained through surveys, observations, and interviews, the study not only provides a thorough overview of recent progress in our theoretical understanding of the subject but also offers insights on how scientifically informed policies can improve the way emergency management is done in China.

This book uses cutting-edge methods, such as big data mining methods on social media, generalized difference in difference, inoperational input–output models, improved data envelopment analysis, improved computable general equilibrium and others to calculate the economic impacts of climate and environmental disasters on China. This book provides the ideas, methods and cases of the redistribution of air pollution emissions in China through evaluating the benefits of meteorological disaster services and meteorological financial insurance. Using big data resources and data mining methods, as well as econometric models, etc., this book provides a comprehensive assessment of the economic impact of disasters in China and studies China's counterpart aid policy and international aid policy for disasters. This book is an academic monograph devoted to the China’s case study. The intended readership includes academics, government officials, graduate students and people concerned about China.

This book analyzes the ways in which the Chinese government and military responded to the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake in Sichuan province. It adopts a comparative and historical perspective in studying the responses of the Chinese government in the first critical 72 hours, the mobilization of the People’s Liberation Army and its difficulties, the assertive and important role of the non-governmental groups which established a partnership with the state in the rescue operations, and the process and politics of reconstruction. The book is rich in materials, including comparative case studies of the Tangshan earthquake in 1976, the outbreak of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome in 2003, the earthquakes in Haiti, Chile and Myanmar, and the contrasts with the Japanese earthquake tsunami in 2011. Researchers, government officials, policy analysts, seismic specialists, journalists and students will find this book extremely useful, conceptually insightful and practically policy-relevant.

This book presents a comprehensive overview of crisis management in China. It considers economic, political and military crises, and also natural disasters and public health problems. In each area it considers the nature of potential crises and their possible effects, and the degree to which China is prepared to cope with crises.

China suffers frequently from many types of natural disasters, which have affected the lives of many millions of Chinese. The steps which the Chinese state has taken to prevent disasters, mitigate their consequences, and reconstruct in the aftermath of disasters are therefore key issues. This book examines the single metropolis of Tianjin in northern China, a city which has suffered particularly badly from natural disasters – the great famine of 1958-61, the great flood of 1963 and the great earthquake of 1976. It discusses how the city managed these disasters, what policies and measures were taken to prevent and mitigate disasters, and to promote reconstruction afterwards. It also explores who suffered from and who benefited from the disasters. Overall, the book shows how disaster management was erratic, sometimes managed highly efficiently and in other cases disappointingly delayed and inept. It concludes that, although the Maoist state possessed formidable resources, disaster management was always constrained by other political and economic considerations, and was never an automatic priority.