Quake Lessons from China

Xiaobo ZhangPeking University and IFPRI

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Sichuan earthquake,May 12, 2008

More than 80,000 deaths21st strongest in history

Total damage: 121 billion USD

Transportation andcommunication were damaged

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15 million lived in the area80% of buildings collapsed

Mountainous areaNot accessible to outside

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Information and Transportation Glut

• Hundreds of thousands of tents and other emergence relief goods were sent to Chengdu Railway station.

• But the transportation system was overwhelmed. The government lost track of the whereabouts of the goods and the trains were stuck in Chengdu.

• President Hu Jintao called Mr. Wang Zhenyao, the relief chief of Ministry of Civil Affairs, to inquire the status of relief goods. His cell phone kept ringing…

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Pairwise Aid • He realized that the traditional top-down aid strategy

failed to respond speedily and effectively to heterogeneous local needs.

• Under pressure, he came up with the idea of pairwise aid strategy:– Matching 21 severely damaged disaster counties with 21

coastal provinces according to the initial rapid assessment of the degree of damage in the counties and economic development level of paired provinces.

– Requiring a donor province to earmark 1% of its annual budget to help the paired county for three years.

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Details of the Policy• Each province sent a deputy governor to take charge of the

relief and reconstruction effort.• The donor province further subcontracted the task to cities

--- pairing one city to one township in the quake county. • The decentralized emergency response system created a

yardstick competition. • The information glut inherent in the centralized emergency

response system was solved.

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How Big is the Pairwise Aid?

• On average, 19,981 RMB (about US$3,000), or 1.5 times of per capita GDP in 2007.

• The amount of civil aid is much smaller: 4,527RMB (about US$700), or one-third of per capita GDP.

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AchievementPartners Funding

(millionyuan)

Number ofprojects

Partners Funding(millionyuan)

Number ofprojects

Guangdong—Wenchuan 11200 702 Hunan—Li county 2010 99

Shandong—Beichuan 12000 369 Jilin—Heishui 1297 201Zhejiang—Qingchuan 8500 538 Anhui—Songpan 2130 320Jiangsu—Mianzhu 11000 295 Jiangxi—Xiaojin 1300 51Shanghai—Dujiangyan 8250 117 Hubei—Hanyuan 2115 116

Beijing—Shifang 7000 108 Chongqing—Chongzhou 1700 111

Henan—Jiangyou 3002 302 Heilongjiang—Jiange 1550 146

Hebei—Pingwu 2800 108 Tianjin—Shaanxi 2237 121Liaoning—An county 3400 88 Shenzhen—Gansu 3000 165Fujian—Pengzhou 4734 143Shanxi—Mao county 2162 226 Total 91387 4326

Total: 91.4 billion yuan (US$ 15 billion). 8

Achievement

• Three year’s reconstruction targets were completed in two years.

• The speed was much faster than the reconstruction effort after Katrina in the US.

• The same approach has been used for poverty alleviation in western China and agricultural R&D in Africa (one province to one country) after the earthquake.

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Using Disasters as an Opportunity to Build up Institutions

• After the epidemic of SARS in 2003, China set up a national emergency system mimicking the Federal Emergency Managing Agency (FEMA) in the US.

• Emergency Response Law of the People's Republic of China was enacted in 2005.

• National emergency plans were drafted.

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