By Cao Yue
In April, the Chinese government inaugurated the new Ministry of Emergency Management as part of the massive government overhaul announced at the National People’s Congress in March.
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China’s inattention to DRR is largely a result of two long-standing and interconnected issues: ministries are uncertain over exactly where responsibilities sit, and they often compete to address disasters. These issues, which have hindered disaster response efforts, prompted the creation of the new ministry.
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In recognition of these issues, the new “super ministry” will take on disaster management powers and resources that were previously spread over 13 other ministerial departments, thus becoming the sole agency in charge of emergency response.
As for mitigation, the new ministry has powers to “handle and or clarify the relationship between mitigation and response," and “lead the mitigation of fires, floods, droughts, geological and other hazards”.
In fact, it has taken over mitigation responsibilities for these hazards from their respective ex-ministries, in addition to absorbing the existing National Committee for Disaster Reduction (NCDR), which so far has only nominally headed the mitigation work of the many agencies because it has lacked the actual authority to do so.
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