Meanwhile, many believed that evacuation efforts were hindered by superstition. The relief effort become much more difficult following the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in the autumn of 1931, which caused the Chinese bond market to collapse. [20] Ka-Che Yip, “Disease, Society and the State: Malaria and Healthcare in Mainland China,” in Disease, Colonialism, and the State: Malaria in Modern East Asian History, ed. [34] In another camp in Jiangxi, 2,476 of the 20,249 refugees died in just three months, constituting an annual mortality rate of 48.9%. 2 (2001). Science. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2006. There was no warning, only a sudden great wall of water. 900,000–2,000,000 1887 Yellow River (Huang He) flood: 1887 3. This was based upon research conducted by team of academics from the University of Nanjing under the leadership of the renowned agricultural economist John Lossing Buck. Borowy, Iris. China’s attention was on a civil war between the Communists and Nationalists (Note: Third encirclement campaign against the Jiangxi Soviet); the Japanese were invading in the North (Note: Japanese invasion of Manchuria), while the world was deep into the Great Depression. [7] In the summer China experienced an extremely powerful East Asian Monsoon. Wuchang xianzhi (Gazetteer of Wuchang County). Flood Risk Management in the People’s Republic of China Learning to Live with Flood Risk This publication presents a shift in the People’s Republic of China from flood control depending on structural measures to integrated flood management using both structural and non-structural measures. 1 Comment As another part of our series on historic floods, here we look at the devastating floods that hit central China in 1931, one of which hit the Yangtze River with huge loss of life, and that particular flood is thought to be one of the deadliest floods of modern times. Education. 62-69. (Accessed at www.archive.org). A field survey by University of Nanking led by John Lossing Buck immediately after the flood found "150,000 people had drowned, and that this number represented less than a quarter of all fatalities during the first 100 days of the flood. New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1968. “Zaihuang yu nongmin de shengcun wiiji——yi 20 shiji 30 niandai qianqi changjiang zhong xiayou diqu wei zhongxin. Whilst emergency relief helped many refugees to survive a period of acute hunger, some argued that importing huge quantities of wheat and flour had a negative economic effect in the longer-term, depriving local farmers and millers of a market for their own produce. Coping with Calamity: Environmental Change and Peasant Response in Central China, 1736-1949. [4] Pierre-Étienne Will, ‘Une cycle hydraulique en Chine: La province du Hubei du XVle au XIXe siècles (A hydraulic cycle in China: The province of Hubei from the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries)’, Bulletin de l’école Française d’Extreme Orient, 68 (1980), pp. Since the 1980s Chinese historians have adopted a much more nuanced approach to the history of disasters. “Fangxun xianduan longwangmiao. Yan Gao. Carnegie Mellon University, 2012, 24-April. Heavy rainfall has led to severe flooding in much of southern China. W. A. Gough, T. Jiang, and H.T. In spite of this, their estimate has become influential, and is almost always reproduced without the important caveat included by the original authors. Widespread population displacement and the destruction of sanitation systems provided perfect conditions for a number of pathogenic microbes. Refugees had been arriving in the city of Wuhan since the late spring. Eventually the region descended into hydraulic crisis, with low-level water control problems being punctuated by catastrophic flood disasters. China floods or Yellow River floods is considered as one of the worst floods in the history of modern China. Outside China, the flood has received relatively little attention. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007. South China Morning Post 14,527 views [39] The Chinese Recorder, November, 1932: 667 – 680; Zhang Bo, “Lun zhengfu zai zaihuang jiuji zhong de zuoyong – yi Wuhan 1931 nian shuizai wei ge’an de kaocha (An Examination of the Effectiveness of Government Disaster Relief – Using the Wuhan flood 1931 as a Case Study).” Jianghan Tribune, December 2006: pp.87-90. The NFRC employed a range of Chinese and foreign experts, including figures such as the famous epidemiologist Wu Liande, the health minister Liu Ruiheng, the public health worker John Grant, and the hydraulic engineer Oliver Todd. Article from alchetron.com. [31][32], Meteorological causes and physical consequences, harvnb error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFNational_Flood_Relief_Commission1933 (, sfn error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFNational_Flood_Relief_Commission1933 (. Across the flood zone an average of 40% became refugees. Excessive deforestation, wetland reclamation, and the over-extension of river dyke networks transformed regular flood pulses, which were an integral feature of the fluvial ecosystem, into destructive inundations, which wrought chaos upon human communities. [31] In the aftermath of the disaster, the cooperative organisations that had been used to reconstruct farming communities were adapted, becoming a central feature of the government’s rural economic policy. This is based the figure published in the first few pages of The Report of the National Flood Relief Commission, 1931-1932. The flood had washed away the summer harvest and destroyed huge amounts of stored grain. [39] The flood began in late spring yet the first shipments of American relief grain only arrived in Shanghai in November. “Ping 1931 nian Jiang-Huai shuizai jiuji zhong de Meimai jiekuan (The role of the US Wheat Loan in the 1931 Yangzi-Huai Flood Relief Effort).” Journal of Shandong Normal University 56, no. Chen, Janet Y. [5] At the beginning of this cycle, increased expenditure on dyke networks offered communities protection from flooding, thereby facilitating widespread agricultural and economic expansion. Nanjing, the capital of China at the time, was under water for six weeks. The Shanghai-based Christian periodical The Chinese Recorder offers particular insight into the involvement of missionaries in the relief effort. Most floods are known by a place name or geographic feature. [32], Whilst the assessment offered in official reports was overwhelmingly positive, in reality the relief campaign was not entirely successful. In 1931, China experienced arguably the most lethal flood in history. The flood zone was roughly equivalent in size to England and half of Scotland, or the states of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut combined. [42] In Zhongguo wusheng dianying juben (Scripts of Chinese silent films), ed. This meant that large cities offered little respite for refugees displaced from rural areas. In July of that year alone, nine cyclones hit the region, which was significantly above the average of two per year. Yaxi yabao The Central China Flood of 1931 extended over the whole of the Yangtse Valley and inundated 70,000 square miles and 8.5 million acres of farmland. Frankfurt and New York: Peter Lang, 2009. London and New York: Routledge Curzon, 2003. [11] Some Western sources allege that death toll of between 3.7 and 4 million people based on their own claims of famine and disease. New York: Columbia University Press, 1964. [16], The flood destroyed huge amounts of housing and farmland. "[26], The 1931 flood was one of the first major tests for the Kuomintang Government. The survival of members of flood-stricken communities cannot be explained simply by examining charity and relief. The Hubei Provincial Archives collated a range of primary source material – including government telegrams, police reports, etc. Liang, M.T. Wuhan: Wuhan chubanshe, 1989. Lindbergh, Anne Morrow. Eventually, the government managed to secure a large loan of wheat and flour from the United States. Wuhan: Hubei Sheng Wuhan Shi Wenshi Ziliao Yanjjiu Weiyuanhui, 1983. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. [32] Margherita Zanasi, Saving the Nation: Economic Modernity in Republican China (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2006). Natural Disaster.. [9] John Lossing Buck eds. Affected Population: 52 Million At the time, the University of Nanjing estimated that the flood had affected 25 million people. [40] NFRC, p.62. Hubei shengzhi (Gazetteer of Hubei Province). Close. This is based the figure published in the first few pages of The Report of the National Flood Relief Commission, 1931-1932. Perdue, Peter C. Exhausting the Earth: State and Peasant in Hunan, 1500-1850. This week, we look back to 1931, when maybe the worst of China's recent floods inundated an area … Rowe, William T. Crimson Rain: Seven Centuries of Violence in a Chinese County. In fact, the mortality rate in relief camps was much higher than that found in rural communities. China floods: Dozens killed, more than a million evacuated. The biggest killer was disease, which accounted for 70% of all fatalities. (Herafter NFRC). In Saving the Nation Margherita Zanasi examines the flood relief effort as part of the broader policies of economic nationalism adopted by certain factions of the Guomindang in the early 1930s. Whilst the majority of these studies offer institutional histories of the disaster, one notable exception is the work of Li Qin, who has examined the social-psychological impact of flood disasters in the Middle Yangzi region during the 1930s. As rival militarists had vied for control of China’s regions over the previous decade, many of the traditional government disaster relief functions had been taken over by the Sino-foreign organisations, such as the China International Famine Relief Commission (CIFRC). As the scale of the disaster became apparent, the government established the National Flood Relief Commission under the auspices of T.V. Kung. Pierre Fuller. [12] In many areas inundation continued well into the autumn, meaning that it was not possible to plant a secondary insurance crop in the winter. These included cholera, measles, malaria, dysentery, and schistosomiasis. Picturing disaster: the 1931 wuhan flood china dialogue central floods chris courtney. The highest proportion could be found in South Anhui, where 61% of the population were displaced by floodwater. The neglected hydraulic defences that protected human communities living alongside the Yangzi and Huai Rivers stood little chance. Zhang Bo. 65-68; Qiu Huafei, “1931 nian Zhong-Mei xiaomai jiekuan deshi yanjiu (A Study of the 1931 Sino-American Wheat Loan Issue)” Jianghai xuekan, no. “Climate Changes and Flood/Drought Risk in the Yangtze Delta, China, During the Past Millennium.” Quaternary International 176-177 (2008): 62-69. Central China flood, 1931. Shenbao Around a tenth of the Chinese population was affected; over two million people died, either by drowning or by the subsequent famine and epidemics. By August of 1931, the Yellow, Yangtze, and Huai Rivers had all flooded so badly that most of central China was submerged. A motion picture entitled Raging Torrent (Kuangliu) describing fictional events during the flood in Hubei was filmed in the aftermath of the disaster. Zanasi, Margherita. Report of the National Flood Relief Commission 1931-1932. Glantz, Mickey. Yu Fengling, Chen Zhongyuan, and Ren Xianyou. [37] Pietz, Engineering the State, pp. Tens of thousands died in their beds. Although in most areas floodwater had receded by the winter, the problems of waterlogging, infrastructure damage, and refugee displacement continued well into the next spring. [33] Measles spread through one camp infecting 1,491 in December 1931 alone, resulting in 682 deaths, mainly amongst children. Wuhan: Wuhan daxue chubanshe, 1989. In some cases relief camps offered an improvement over spontaneous squatter settlements, yet in others refugees experienced extremely high death tolls from disease. Under favourable meteorological and political conditions the human management of river systems gave rise to a thriving agricultural economy and stable society. Reposted from Disasterhistory.org. by Peiwei Zheng and Guiqing Liu (Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe, 1996). Engineering the State: The Huai River and Reconstruction in Nationalist China, 1927-1937. [41] Although such responses were both socially stigmatised and legally prohibited, they helped refugees to survive a period of acute deprivation. “On the Relation between the Great Flood of 1931, The Drought of 1934 and the Centres of Action in the Far East.” Guoli Zhongyang yanjiu yuan qixiang yanjiu suo jikan 10 (1937). Some sold their children to survive, while others resorted to cannibalism. Central China floods of 1931 Map of Nanjing China Estimates of the total death toll range from 145,000 to between 3.7 million and 4 million. “The Floods of China, a National Disaster.” Journal of Geography 31 (January/December 1932): 199-206. Conflict zones became so acute that some people began to engage in cannibalism [... Danger zone— the Dragon King Temple ) ” Hubei wenshi 3 ( 2003 ). ” Quaternary International no! League of Nations to assist in the Yangzi and Huai were the most famous language. 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