Review Research On The Governmental Flood Aid In Hunan Province In 1954

In recent years, there are lots of research books or papers about disaster relief. However, most of these research papers focus on the period that before the establishment of PRC: either focus on the famine relief research of a certain federal dynasty, or focus on one historical people's thoughts about disaster relief. The research about disaster relief history which after the establishment of PRC just take little room in the whole disaster relief research. What is more, when people made the research about disaster relief, they usually just put their attention on the relief after disaster, ignored the defense measure before disaster and the effort for struggling the disaster. In fact, all of these consist of the whole progress of disaster relief of PRC, and it also becomes the main features which are quite different from old China's disaster relief.Based on the above reasons, this paper take"Review Research on The Governmental Flood Aid in Hunan Province in 1954"as the main topic, the purpose is to provide some references and enlightment for the later disaster relieving work by investigating the government disaster relieving work organization as well as the disaster relief process and analyzing the characteristic and effect of the government disaster relieving work.In 1954, the climate of the Yangtze valley became unusual, and the stormy rain poured down in a large area and lasted for a long period. As a result, the water of the rivers and lakes rose suddenly and it quickly developed as"the flood which spread to largest scale in Yangtze valley since 1931 in 20th century". In this flood, Hunan Province got a great economic damage: It totally lost 2.2 billion kilograms grain, 13.5 million kilograms cotton. There were 2131 people lost their lives, and 1266 people got injured. Farmers totally lost 1837 cows, 28576 pigs. There were 210 thousand all kinds of irrigation equipments damaged in the flood. 6.8 million people became the victims of this flood. Facing the flood threat, the government rapidly organized the strength of various social aspects, established flood prevention organization led by the government from the top downward, and called on all the people and invested all the material resources into the flood prevention struggle: It had made all kinds of defending measures before the flood was coming, such as the spiritual warm-up for anti-flood,established army for anti-flood,collected the fees and grain for anti-flood. When the flood was coming, government organized the struggling war against flood, and transferred people to the safe area when dams were in danger. Government also led all the commercial organizations to do their best to prevent people from economic damage. Through those activities, the lost of flood was limited. After the flood, in order to cure the damage of flood, Hunan province government took a lot of measures, such as supplied necessary life aid,supplied the money for flood aid,advocated self-rescuing,provided the medical aid,reestablish education, etc.Through the whole disaster relief process, the government inherited the relief mode in revolutionary period, and made the positive policies according to the practical situation. Not only paid attention on the material aid, but also paid enough attention on the spiritual aid. It had made a good effect on decreasing the damage caused by flood, made the government and civilians become much closer. It also improved the agricultural cooperation movement in Hunan province. Certainly, because of some objective and subjective reasons, this disaster relief also showed its own disadvantages: the insufficient display of other strength, the phenomenon of corruption, etc.