May 16 in Parallel Session 3E "Earthquakes, Hurricanes, Floods & More: Dealing with Natural Disasters". Presented by Xiaobo Zhang, IFPRI.

1. Quake Lessons from China
Xiaobo Zhang
Peking University and IFPRI
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2. Sichuan earthquake,
May 12, 2008
More than 80,000 deaths
21st strongest in history
Total damage: 121 billion USD
Transportation and
communication were damaged
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3. 15 million lived in the area
80% of buildings collapsed
Mountainous area
Not accessible to outside
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4. 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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5. 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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6. 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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7. 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$700), or one-third of per
capita GDP.
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8. Achievement
Partners Funding
(million
yuan)
Number of
projects
Partners Funding
(million
yuan)
Number of
projects
Guangdong—Wenchuan 11200 702 Hunan—Li county 2010 99
Shandong—Beichuan 12000 369 Jilin—Heishui 1297 201
Zhejiang—Qingchuan 8500 538 Anhui—Songpan 2130 320
Jiangsu—Mianzhu 11000 295 Jiangxi—Xiaojin 1300 51
Shanghai—Dujiangyan 8250 117 Hubei—Hanyuan 2115 116
Beijing—Shifang 7000 108 Chongqing—Chongzhou 1700 111
Henan—Jiangyou 3002 302 Heilongjiang—Jiange 1550 146
Hebei—Pingwu 2800 108 Tianjin—Shaanxi 2237 121
Liaoning—An county 3400 88 Shenzhen—Gansu 3000 165
Fujian—Pengzhou 4734 143
Shanxi—Mao county 2162 226 Total 91387 4326
Total: 91.4 billion yuan (US$ 15 billion). 8

9. 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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10. 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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