| Taking Henan Province from 1927 to 1937 as the center, by means of theories and methods in history, sociology, psychology and politics, on the basis of outlining the situation, cause and influence of disasters there as well as sorting out the disaster-relief administrative institutes, this text has overall and comprehensively inspected and seen through the basic procedures and measures of social disaster-relief work, the source and allocation of the relief fund, the transportation of relief goods and the delivery of the disaster-relief information, the award and punishment for the relief work and the supervision on it, and the main factors that restricted the effect and efficiency of the work, in the hope to illustrate the operating process of Kuomintang government's disaster relief mechanism in which some problems existed, and also to objectively demonstrate the way to cope with disasters and famines for the government and civilians as a whole, the relations between these two sides, the capability to deal with disasters and famines, and changes between relief work then and that of the earlier periods, etc.Chapter One generalizes the disaster situations and their social consequences in Henan Province between 1927-1937 and briefly analyzes, both nationwide and in Henan Province proper, the general picture of the social charity institutions and entities with characteristics of that age, based in the focused reflection and rearrangement of organizational reforms in the central and local disaster-relief administrative agencies.Over a mere span of ten years between 1927 and 1937, Henan Province incurred continuous concurrent and extensive natural disasters. Although the frequencies of the famines were without doubt connected with factors of physical geography like geographical climates, they could also be mainly contributed to the social factors such as dilapidated water conservancy facilities, imbalance of crops plantation and the decline of rural economy, etc. Each disaster would not only bring heavy losses of life and properties upon people, but also cause severe scarcities of labor, domestic animals as well as forest reserves and, at the same time, lay waste enormous farm land. They could further deteriorate the natural and social environment for the survival of peasants, thus providing circumstances for their recurrences.In Chapter Two, a close study is focused on the basic procedures of disaster relief during the Kuomintang administration and the expenditures on the relevant staff who implemented the relief procedures. Also, the measures against disasters, the reduction and prevention of disasters were discussed.Based on the ancient policy on disaster relief, a set of fixed relief procedures, during the Kuomintang administration, consisted of reporting, inspecting, investigating and relieving, and the expenditures on relief implementing staff were also definitely stipulated. The relief measures contained generally two parts, the temporary relief efforts such as emergency aid, grain distributing, and calamity eliminating, etc. and the post-calamity remedies such as working for aid and agricultural loans, etc. The reduction and prevention were tackled in two aspects, the improvement on social conditions featuring saving the agriculture, reviving the countryside and valuing the stockpile, and the improvement on natural conditions featuring encouraging the forestation and valuing the water conservancy.In Chapter Three the resource of funds for disaster relief from government and society is classified and investigated, and the problems in the process of distribution are positively discussed and analyzed.In general, social charitable institutions collected funds for disaster relief through donations from overseas Chinese and foreign countries, through loans from commercial banks, by persuading individuals or Chinese and foreign factory owners to make contributions, through estate donation and membership fees, through money-raising by entertainments and news media, through government subsidies, etc. The government raised funds by floating bonds for disaster relief, by forceful apportion and donations from government offices, through monetary provisions for additional tax item, loans and disaster relief, etc. In principle, funds for disaster relief were distributed on the basis of the degree of disaster damage, which is classified according to a certain standard. But in practice, the distribution of relief funds was not completely fair due to the indefinite distribution standard itself and man-made factors.Chapter Four provides a detailed study on the national government's preferential policies on relief supplies, refugee's evacuation, information delivery and so on. It also provides an analytical study of the gap between policies and their implementation.The national government offered certain preferentially free relief supplies and free transportation to refugees. However, more often than not, unsatisfactory roads conditions, transport vehicles deficiency and time spent in asking for and getting free licenses combined to bring about a gap between policies and their implementation. The national government also offered preferentially free relief information delivery, which was carried out through two channels-official one and civilian one, and by two kinds of way-traditional way of letters and modern way of telegram, telephone, newspaper and magazines etc. Relief information delivery suffered from problems such as man-made and natural destruction of communication system, difficulties inasking and getting relief efforts telegrams, and restricted space in newspapers and periodicals.Chapter Five arranges and investigates the laws and regulations of rewards and penalties for disaster relief under the Kuomintang administration's rule in terms of system, casts a restricted view on the fulfillment of these laws and regulations in terms of practice and meanwhile analyses and explores the means and efficiency of supervision over disaster relief.The Kuomintang administration laid down the reward terms for donors, people who contributed great efforts to disaster relief, and people who rendered outstanding service in constructing the disaster protection facilities, with regard to the different governmental and non-governmental objects and enterprises. It also placed great emphasis on the fulfillment, and meanwhile established the system regulating the illegal activities committed by the relief workers and charities in the process of disaster relief. But because of its own defects and the incompleteness of the supervision system, the penalty system could not achieve its expected effect. As to the means of supervising the disaster relief, the cause and effect punishment, the supervision from the public, the supervision between the high and low level in the administrative system, and the superintendence over the supervision system were carried out in the governmental relief efforts, and the punishment by turns, the supervision within the system, the supervision from the government and the supervision from the public were adopted in the charity relief efforts. But due to the lack of fine political environment and the cooperation of other administrative systems, the effect of the supervision was not satisfactory and corruption still universal.Chapter Six provides a study on the main factors that restricted the disaster relief effects of Henan, and especially probes into the basic general situation of those disaster relief administrators, disclosing causes of inefficiency in disaster relief.Constant warfare, widespread bandits, turbulent political situations were the social factors that affected the disaster relief effects; a shortage of capital and insufficient funds were the financial factors that caused the poor implementation of the plan that brought preliminary and permanent solution to disaster relief. And the existence of a host of regional disaster relief personnel who were low-quality, temporarily-gathered and devotion-lacking was the subjective factor that led to the inefficiency and falseness of disaster relief.
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