Those Who Have Disappeared (Again): Emergency Response in China

In recent years, China’s approach to disaster management has been “keeping political stability.” In the aftermath of an incident, local authorities quickly dispatch police to seal off the affected area, only allowing access by government-approved media, and “physically isolate” the victims’ families by asking them to stay in hotels and avoid contact with journalists. A rare “free window” after the Meizhou-Dabu Expressway disaster was enough for the Sanlian Life Weekly journalist to find out about the victims from online platforms. Nevertheless, the news article disappeared shortly after the incident, and the victims’ names vanished again, making it impossible to establish a support network involving social organizations and the public. 

Disaster relief has been closely linked to political power in China since ancient times, ranging from the legend of “Dayu controlling the floods” to the constant emphasis put on how well the national system ostensibly works in the current era. The narrative focuses on disaster-related achievements toshowcase the capacity of those in power and boost their legitimacy, whereas individuals affected by the disaster are largely ignored.

In recent decades, the relationship between China’s party-state and society has undergone dynamic changes, with increased enthusiasm toward the involvement of civil society in disaster relief and public welfare. However, control strategies, adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic, have once again shown the government’s controlling nature and desire to keep a lid on the public sphere overall. By exploring China’s political context, from the perspective of emergency response, we can get a glimpse of how the power structure has shifted and how autonomous civic participation in public welfare efforts has been nipped in the bud. In this article, I will explore post-1949 changes in the emergency management system, the differences in the government's intention behind disaster relief in different periods, and the resulting social impacts.

1949-1978，“Unified” Management

After 1949, China was governed by a unified management model in which the government exercised control over all aspects of life. Emergency rescue work can be characterized by “foregrounding politics, with the Party and the Government taking over everything and mobilizing the masses to help themselves and rejecting international assistance.” The social space for non-governmental organizations was stifled by an approach that placed the Party at the center of everything: traditional private charities such as Shantang benevolent associations were all banned or transformed. The few remaining social organizations operated as extensions of the Party.

This approach to managing crises prioritized strict information control, as evidenced by the Great Famine (1959-1961): by the end of 1960, large numbers of people had starved to death in rural China, causing the population to fall by 10 million in just a year. A People’s Daily headline on 29 December, on the other hand, claimed that “China’s Agricultural Production Suffered a Severe Natural Disaster in 1960, and 600 million People Overcame, with Full Confidence, the Serious Difficulties” without the article mentioning any death toll at all.   

Similarly, on January 5, 1970, after a 7.7 magnitude earthquake in Tonghai, Yunnan province, the only disaster report published in the People’s Daily provided no information about the magnitude or casualty count. The earthquake zone was even euphemized as an area south of the provincial capital, Kunming. Relief sent to the quake zone included hundreds of thousands of copies of The Quotations of Chairman Mao and Chairman Mao badges. Journalists were denied access, only photography by scientific workers was permitted, but only objects were allowed to be photographed, not people. These rules were also applied in the wake of the 1976 Tangshan earthquake. It was not until the thirtieth anniversary of the Tonghai earthquake that the casualty count was released: 15,801 deaths.

In 1975, a devastating rainstorm in Zhumadian, Henan province, resulted in the bursting of two large reservoirs and numerous smaller ones. The ensuing flood caused a death toll exceeding 26,000. The exact death toll from this flood is unknown and should include deaths from infectious diseases and famine directly caused by it. Some studies have called this “by far the world’s worst dam disaster” “As many as 230,000 people may have lost their lives to this catastrophe, yet for two decades it was successfully airbrushed from history by the Chinese authorities.”

As mentioned above, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck Tangshan in Hebei province on 28 July 1976. The recorded death toll was the highest for any earthquake ever (over 240,000 in the official reckoning), but Chinese media did not directly report on the disaster, and no victims were mentioned. The next day, the People's Daily merely stated that “the great leader Chairman Man and the Party Central Committee were extremely concerned, and sent their condolences, whereas the people of the quake zone, under the guidance of Chairman Mao’s revolutionary ideology, had successfully upheld the revolutionary motto “Man can Conquer Nature” in their disaster-relief efforts. Other commentaries in the paper emphasized “self-reliant disaster relief” to reflect the “great superiority of the socialist system of proletarian dictatorship.” China rejected international assistance from the UN and the international community. The death toll of the Tangshan earthquake was made public only three years later, and journalist Qian Gang was only able to publish his famous book Tangshan Earthquake ten years down the road, a book he states is about “people’s deaths, the human tragedy, what people experienced during the earthquake.”

1978 – 2003: A Multi-stakeholder Model

Following the 'Reform and Opening-Up' period initiated in 1978, the Ministry of Civil Affairs was established to oversee social administration, including a dedicated Rural Social Relief Department to coordinate disaster relief efforts in rural China. Central specialized agencies such as the National Disaster Reduction Committee and the State Council Earthquake Relief Headquarters were also set up.

Since 1980, China has officially accepted assistance from what is now the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). In May 1987, Government-organized non-governmental organizations (GONGOs) such as the Chinese Red Cross and the China Youth Development Foundation began to play a role in emergency response and assistance. When a major forest fire broke out in the Greater Khingan region of Heilongjiang province, multiple Chinese ministries and commissions coordinated foreign aid by setting up a working group. The first time China proactively requested international assistance.

The arrival of international NGOs in China also led to a revival of Chinese non-governmental organizations’ role. The 1982 Constitution of the People’s Republic of China explicitly provided for citizens’ freedom of association. In September 1988, the first administrative regulations specifically about registration and management of Chinese non-governmental organizations, the Administrative Measures for Foundations were issued. The United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women was held on 1 September 1995 in Beijing; the concept of the NGO entered Chinese public discourse, and certain parts of civil society started to become active.   

In 1996, the Ministry of Civil Affairs issued a Notice on Giving Full Play to the Role of Charitable Organizations in Social Relief Work, stating that charitable organizations were “a bridge between the government and the people. They have specific strengths when mobilizing social resources and implementing poverty alleviation and relief and play an important role.”

Two more documents were issued in 1998: the Regulations on Registration and Administration of Social Groups and the Interim Regulations on Registration and Administration of Private Non-Enterprise Units. These set a basis for registering non-governmental and non-profit service organizations in social welfare, education, health, and the environment. In June 1999, the Law on the Donations for Public Welfare was passed, the country’s first law on charitable donations. 

Political reform led to numerous changes in the news media in the 1980s. Journalist Qian Gang argues that breakthroughs occurred with disaster reporting becoming more human and calling for reflection. But in the 1990s, the trend reversed. No reporting was initially allowed on the 1998 floods, and even later journalists who covered them were subjected to critiques. When SARS broke out in 2003, the official reaction was suppression and concealment of the news, but eventually, the dam burst, and reports began to surface. The official tone later turned towards heavy reporting of the anti-SARS measures.