The City Crisis Management In China: Issues, Goals And Framework

A series of violent crises occurred successively in recent years, including the 911 Terrorist Attack, SARS and Tsunami, make people aware that our world is filled with various social or natural crises. Besides, with the rapid development of economics, China has shown a general tendency of urbanization. Accompany with the expanding of the city scale and the increasing of urban population, it is much more urgent than before for the public managers to pay more attention on the crisis and emergency events occurring in the city due to the associated amplifying effect, radiation effect and chain effect caused by the city crises. Therefore, to establish an effective crisis management system becomes a critical challenge to the public managers so as to avoid, control and finally eliminate the crisis. Starting with the importance and urgency of current crisis management system in China, with the review of its current social crisis situations, this paper analyses the status, effectiveness and existing problems of current city public crisis management system of China. Through case analysis of crisis management in SARS period and the study on the lessons and experiences of international city crisis management, a framework of city crisis management system suitable for China is proposed based on the basic theory of public management. The paper is composed of five chapters. Chapter 1 is an introduction. Chapter 2 describes the basic theories of the crisis and crisis management. Chapter 3 gives an analysis of the current situation of China's city crisis management via the case study of SARS. Chapter 4 reviews some experiences of international city crisis management. Chapter 5 explores the goals and the corresponding mode suitable for China's city crisis management.