Abstract
This chapter gives a close look at the achievements and weaknesses in ancient China’s disaster management. Historians have called such unique disaster and famine-relief governance 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 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.
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Chen, G. (2016). Natural Disaster Management in Ancient China. In: The Politics of Disaster Management in China. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54831-3_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54831-3_2
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