1931 Huaihe River Valley Flood Relief Study

From June to August in 1931, a nationwide big flood took place in the centre of yangzi and Huaihe River. The flood lasted a long time and covered a large number of areas, so that the consequence is extremely great. The flood spreaded to 23 provinces where about 3,700,000 people died and 100,000,000 people suffered. It caused countless property damages and unprecedented economic and social crisis. The damage to the provinces, such as Hubei, Hunan, Jiangsu, Anhui, Jiangxi and Zhejiang, caused by the deluge of the Yangzi River and Huai River was the biggest and most representative.The happening of such large flood had its historical reasons: the phenomenon that the Yellow River occupied branches of the Huai River hadn't got control for a long time, and floods in areas along the Yellow River and the Huai River occurred ceaselessly. There're also geographical reasons. For example, the abnormal rainfall in 1931 destroyed vegetations and forests, so that the natural lakes and low lands were used as farmlands due to the low productivity at that time.Moreover, there're social reasons. In the period of the Republic of China, the social situation was complex. The battle royal of warlords and corruption of the authorities were the important reasons for the enlargement of the flood.The flood happening in the most developed areas in terms of agriculture in China in 1931 destructively destroyed the rice planted in Jiang and Han areas, brought huge expanse in agriculture, and badly affected the economy, society, education and culture in the whole Jiang and Huai areas, leaving people unrepairable hurts.Facing the unexpected flood, the Nanjing national government established the Flood Relief Committee, and promulgated varied plans. Specifically, they didn't only relieve the consumable economy, but attached importance to the construction of water conservancy and the rebuild of the agricultural economy, which has its progressive functions. From the practical perspective, their efforts were negligible with respect to the total loss of the disaster areas. At the same time, the government focusing on the civil war and ignoring the people's livelihood couldn't retrieve the loss caused by the flood. Thus the efficiency of the flood relief was low.