The Locust Disaster And The People's Response During The Republic Of China

The locust disaster was one of the serious natural calamities andendangered people's lives during the Repubic of China. Compared to theQing Dynasty, the locust control in the Repubican China was different.During the Repubic of China neoteric science was imported andsparkpluged, the scholars tried hard to enhance efficiency of locustcontrol through neoteric natural science methods. The pattern of locustcontrol was progressively transformed from traditional research throughexperience and describing disaster conditions to scientific and analyticresearch, science and technology played a more and more important rolein the locust control. During the Repubic of China the people's responseto the locust disaster had unique character, what they had done laidfoundation to contemporary scientific locust control career. This paperdivides six chapters to discuss the locust disaster and the people'sresponse during the Republic of China.Chapter one mainly examines the previous studies. During the lastcentury, many studies were conducted on the locust outbreaks in ancientChina, but none of the studies were complete and systematic on theRepublican China, especially on the distribution, the locust controltechniques and the transformation of the locust control ideology.Chapter two explains the distribution and its characteristics of locustduring the Republican China. The paper points out that most of the locustoutbreaks occurred in northern and eastern China, at that time the locust disaster of southwestern China became more serious. And the paper alsoanalyzes the causes of its outbreaks, it was due to continual warfare,extensive cultivation and negative attitude of locust control. The locustdisaster and society came into being a vicious circle. This disaster gavevarious negative impacts to life of the people.Chapter three to five discusses how did the people of Republican Chinadeal with the locust outbreaks. There were there aspects: 1.Some returnedstudents researched on scientific control measures and propagandizedscientific knowledge of locust and its control methods to the commonpeople. Through learning the experience of relevant achievements offoreign countries, they carried on experiment and inspection for locusts,and began to produce the control methods and manufacture locusteliminating appliances.What they had done laid foundation tocontemporary scientific locust control career. 2. The authorities showedsome attention to the locust control, especially Kuomintang andCommunist Party regime. The period of 1927—1937 was the golden ageof the science development, the government of Kuomintang asked theprovinces should establish the locust control system and draw outrelevant control ordinances. However during the period of the RepublicanChina, it hadn't nationwide policy and uniform control system, eachprovince does things in his own way. 3. Local authority and its peopleorganized kinds of locust wiping activities. There was an network forthe locust control at different levels of the government, under theguidance of the technicians, the villagers were organized by many means.And because of the new-style chemic wiping techniques and implementsadopted, efficiency of locust control was greatly improved, some placesdid well in locust wiping.Chapter six summarizes the characteristics of locust outbreaks, its control measures and relief system. During the Republican China, the relief workof the government was utterly inadequate method in dealing with a severe.The paper points out reinforcing governmental support and unitiveadminister, paying attention to make use of science and technology inlocust wiping and constituting nationwide integrative control pattern arethe important apocalypses to modem locust control system.