Flood Risk Management In China

China has been a country with frequent occurrence of flood since ancient time. Flood has been the most damaging natural disaster in China in terms of loss of assets and casualties. The flood situation is experiencing outstanding changes due to impacts of large-scale human activities and environmental evolution. With the development of society and economy, flood security has been a challenge and flood is gradually becoming a crucial and urgent issue influencing the sustainable development in China. However, there are still issues of extensive management, low flood mitigation standard, insufficient investment, out-of-dated legislation and provision, and so on in disaster mitigation. Flood security system can not match with requirement of social and economic development in future.The paper briefly reviews the history of flood management in China, analyzes situation of flood control in the new millennium, then draw a conclusion that a transition from fighting with flood to flood management will be must, basing on overall comparison among flood policies of USA, Japan and China.The paper explores the characteristics of flood risks and probes definition and nature of flood risk management. It points out that flood risk management is a kind of extension and development of perception of controlling flood. Within Chinese context, we have to choose flood management mode with risk. Basing on that, the paper discusses how to set up a proper and well-tailored flood management mode in order to provide reference and theory support for the improvement of flood management system in China.