Natural Disaster Research, In Northwest China

Northwest China is one of the most vulnerable regions of the ecological environment, the various types of natural disasters happening one after another. the natural disasters showed distinct characteristics with seriousness, grandness and multi-disaster occurrence in general. Among those disasters, droughts occurred the most frequent and most serious. The outbreaks, with3distinct peaks, showed a synchronous and asynchronous nature. The geographical distribution was uneven, being interacted with the surrounding provinces and regions. The occurrence of droughts, floods and earthquakes, showed a gradually increasing tendency in frequency. The causes showed2distinct disaster chains with drought and earthquakes.In Republic of China, natural disaster was an important factor restricting the population reproduction in Northwest China. The big number of death and fleeing, the high frequency of political changes, the decline of the physical fitness of people made far-reaching impact on the society and economy in Northwest China. Disasters had negative impacts on the psychology of the then people, including self-denial, passively waiting for aids, and prevailing superstition, which weakened the Ethical awareness to some extent.The frequent occurrence of the natural disasters resulted in the big cut of food production, famers suffering serious economic losses. The large number of abandoned arable land became the main factor which further pulled the rural economy to the brink of bankruptcy. Natural disasters also caused the rising food prices and slumping land prices, more frequent transfer of the land ownership, which made looser ties between land and famers. Therefore the rural class composition changed.In Republic of China, suffering from natural disasters, a big quantity of rural population rushed into towns and cities, which were economically depressed and incapable of accepting disaster victims and taking the responsibility of assisting the rural areas. The urban residents ignored and even adopted a hostile attitude to the victims, which made complicated relations between the rural and urban areas in Northwest China in the disaster periods. Affected by the disasters, the towns and cities in Northwest China saw situations of shrinking markets, economic recession. Some individual towns and cities even witnessed a temporary deformity of prosperity due to the large influx of population and the increasing demand. Though the influx of the victims improved the development and complementation of municipal facilities and rescue system, it challenged the city public security seriously.In Republic of China, the central government and local authorities both took the relief responsibilities actively, who paid attention to the construction of relief systems. Besides the traditional relief countermeasures such as direct food relief, cash relief and crop relief, the central government and five provincial authorities in Northwest China took the relief-for-work measures which intended to have a comprehensive solution to the disaster. With organization of forestation, water conservation, construction and protection of water conservancy facilities, recovery and development warehousing, establishment of a climate monitoring system, they intended to eradicate the root causes of disasters. The then governments could realize the importance of the coordinated development between economy and environment in Northwest China, which is commendable.The serious disasters caused concern at home and abroad and the social forces were extensively mobilized. The domestic and foreign organizations and individuals participated actively in disaster relief activities. Among which, the effectiveness of relief from China International Famine Relief Commission and China Life-saving Commission was the most significant. And media such as newspapers as the representative of public opinion, played an active role in actively reporting the disaster situations in Northwest China, continuously urging the public to participate in disaster relief, and boosting the spirit of the victims.In Republic of China, the disaster relief witnessed a transformation from traditional approaches to modern approaches, which showed co-existence characteristics. During the relief process, they formed a good interactive relationship by central government offering monetary investment, local authorities organizing relief activities and various social classes actively participating in the relief. However, the total investment from the different-level authorities was generally inadequate, whose subject role did not play fully. That there were not united disaster relief mechanisms among provinces in Northwest China, social resources did not get a good configuration and application, there was a lack of regulatory functions, and among all the relief aspects saw the corrupt practices, directly influenced the relief effect in Northwest China.The relief activities from different social classes in that period, this paper intends to provide a helpful historic reference to the disaster prevention to Northwest China, even whole China.