A Different Path from Tangshan to Wenchuan: China’s Participation in the International Disaster Reduction Regimes and its Domestic Impacts

The catastrophic Wenchuan earthquake provides an uncomfortable opportunity to examine China’s disaster management system. This paper would approach this issue from the perspective of international politics, trying to explore the interaction between the international factors and the development of China’s domestic disaster administrative system. The Wenchuan quake is one of the most devastating disasters in China’s modern history. Many naturally tend to compare it with the Tangshan earthquake, the most deadly natural disaster since 1949, happening thirty years ago. One of the sharp contrasts between the disaster relief measures of Wenchuan and Tangshan is China’s openness to international aid and foreign media. Many complain that the then Chinese government’s rejection to foreign aid exacerbated the destruction of the Tangshan quake. Such comparison has touched upon, although very briefly, the underlying international factors in the development of Chna’s disaster management. The author of this paper will go further along this path, using the Tangshan and Wenchuan quakes as two reference points to examine how international factors affect the domestic political processes in the specific issue area of disaster management. The two major earthquakes are highlighted not because they belong to the same domain. Thi