Guangxi Flood Disaster And Relief Work In Early Years Of PRC (1950-1957)

Guangxi was located in the southwest of China, consisted of various ethnic groups who were struggling with poor life before the foundation of PRC. The Kuomintang, landlords, bandits were extremely exploitation and oppression, resulting in economic backwardness and poor condition of people’s livelihood. Guangxi frequently occurred natural disasters in history. All the kinds of natural disasters did not reduce, or even increase during the early period of the PRC. The paper explores Guangxi flood disaster and relief work in early days of new China between 1950 and 1957. In this research, not only do we mainly focus on the causes and the characteristics of the flood disaster in Guangxi, but also how the Guangxi provincial government and the communities respond it when confronted with severe flood, then gaining some relief work experience from it. All this experience will provide us some reference for disaster relief work in contemporary society.The previous flood disasters caused serious harm in both rural and urban. And it also has bad effect on people’s livelihood, left with barren land, grain reduction, affecting the agricultural production process. Meanwhile, the flood caused plants shutdown in urban areas, water conservancy facilities destroyed, hindering economic development.In 1950s, flood has its specific natural and social factors of Guangxi. The typical karst landform in Guangxi aggravated the flood. The Guangxi banditry raised everywhere in the early days of new China who burnt houses, killed the local people, looted money, and destroyed the agricultural production. As a result, it lead to man-made disasters and exacerbated flood damage. The industry and agriculture of Guangxi has a lag of economic development for a long time as well as poor technology, which heavily restricted the peoples" disaster relief. People cut down trees for farming and food due to lacking of awareness to resist disasters, resulting in a large area of soil erosion, silting, which ultimately caused the flood disasters.The flood in this period had characteristics of diversity, seasonality, time and space. There are mountainous flood plains, hills flood and water logging. The disaster frequently appeared roughly in the west of Guilin-Monsanto-Rong-Hepu and mainly in 4-9 months. In addition, it easily leads to other disasters, such as drought, pests, landslides, after the flood.The frequent floods bring people in a dilemma. Guided by the central government instructions, the Guangxi autonomous region government responded fast, "no one left to starve to death", "disaster is as emergent as fire fighting", "self-sufficiency, saving crossing shortage, people need to help each other, and auxiliary government need relief", guided by these, the autonomous region government made their priority in distributing relief food money and everything went well. The government encouraged the communities in helping people rebuilding their homes masses, developing industry and agriculture and economic foundation, easing employment pressure and helping victims went through the difficult times. On the basis of the government relief, the community enterprises and institutions, social groups and individuals are actively involved in disaster relief. They carry forward the spirit of mutual love, public donations, donating food, banking players provided loans to enterprises to help agricultural and sideline business and native products acquisitions. All these measures greatly support the reconstruction work of the people. In addition, the government set up mutual aid organization to carry out self-help production, but also by improving the natural and social conditions in order to reduce disaster from happening again.Guangxi people’s government played a key role in Guangxi Flood Relief from 1950 to 1957. These years has witnessed the governor performed better in forming the relief plans and improving disaster response mechanisms never before. Government took the balance between the social reform and relief work and the relief is on the top of their agenda. All this helped the victims went through the bad days, even the worse national natural disasters between 1959 to 1961.Overall, the Guangxi flood relief measures from 1950 to 1957 took well. It protected both the people’s lives and property, improved the economy, stabilized the society, built new image of the government and consolidated the new born socialist regime as well. However, it also revealed some shortcomings in the disaster relief work, such as bureaucratic tendencies, weak disaster awareness and rigid ideas in people’s mind, deforestation and lack of ecological-well being conscious. These all need to be strengthened in terms of awareness and social behavior improvement, providing a reference for disaster prevention and relief in the future.