Treating disaster as a development opportunity : a study of earthquake recovery in Sichuan

Abstract

This thesis is a study of some of the social consequences of the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake. It aims at describing how centrally formulated policies on post-earthquake restoration have been implemented locally, and how the lives of people in rural areas have changed since the Wenchuan earthquake in May 2008.

The Wenchuan earthquake that struck Sichuan province on the 12th of May 2008 was one of the most destructive natural disasters in the history of modern China, both in terms of loss of human lives and material damages. A little over one year after the earthquake, Sichuan is starting to recover. The province is not merely returning to normal, it is currently experiencing unprecedented economic growth, something which is largely due to extensive government investment in large reconstruction projects. Under the slogan “Build Back Better”, provincial authorities have treated the earthquake as an opportunity to improve the quality of infrastructure and public facilities, as well as to encourage modernization of residential buildings to reduce the vulnerability to future earthquakes. Moreover, measures have been taken to improve the pre-disaster conditions for industrial and agricultural production in the earthquake affected area, in order to at increase the overall level of economic output. The development that is currently taking place in Sichuan can not be understood as separate from the general trend of development that has been observed in western regions of China over the last decade. Rather, the governments willingness to place massive investments in the reconstruction of traditionally poor rural areas reflects its long term commitment to economic development in the western provinces. Consequentially, the Wenchuan earthquake seems to have sped up processes that were initiated more than ten years ago with the formulation of the 1999 Development of the west policy, including capitalist penetration, urbanization, industrialization, and diversion of surplus rural labor into non agricultural work.

This study examines how this market driven process of disaster recovery in combination with the Chinese government's strategic resource allocation has affected social inequality in one of the earthquake affected villages in Sichuan.