EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

The Qing’s central government response to the most severe drought over the past 300 years

Xudong Chen, Le Tao, Fangyu Tian, Yun Su (), Jingxue Pan, Siying Chen and Xianshuai Zhai
Additional contact information
Xudong Chen: Beijing Normal University
Le Tao: Beijing Normal University
Fangyu Tian: Beijing Normal University
Yun Su: Beijing Normal University
Jingxue Pan: Beijing Normal University
Siying Chen: Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU)
Xianshuai Zhai: Beijing Institute of Education

Climatic Change, 2024, vol. 177, issue 7, No 6, 20 pages

Abstract: Abstract The Dingwu Great Famine (DGF) is considered to be the worst drought in China over the past 300 years. How the central government took steps to cope with the catastrophe during this period and ultimately survived deserves in-depth study. This paper collects the official records during the DGF and uses textual analysis and statistical methods to explore the responses carried by the central government. We found that 21 measures in 7 categories had been taken in response to this extreme drought, with political, economic, and cultural responses being the most commonly used. The governmental responses during DGF can be divided into three phases and had a significant “mismatch” (6 months lagging behind) compared with the meteorological process, which may be related to the higher social robustness in the early period. The 7 categories can be further clustered into 3 types based on their time-series performance. The first type includes economic, material, and political responses, which were aimed at responding to the drought impacts and reducing social losses more quickly and played the role of a “quick effect drug” for society. The second type includes agricultural and engineering, and population responses, which mitigated the drought impacts through “after-effects” measures and played the role of “slow-release drug”. The third type is the cultural response, which acted like a “placebo”. It did not help to mitigate the drought but alleviated the dissatisfaction of the refugees by shaping the spiritual objects (rain gods), thus maintaining social stability.

Keywords: Governmental Responses; Droughts; Dingwu Great Famine; Disaster Management; Chinese History (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10584-024-03767-6 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:climat:v:177:y:2024:i:7:d:10.1007_s10584-024-03767-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/10584

DOI: 10.1007/s10584-024-03767-6

Access Statistics for this article

Climatic Change is currently edited by M. Oppenheimer and G. Yohe

More articles in Climatic Change from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-20
Handle: RePEc:spr:climat:v:177:y:2024:i:7:d:10.1007_s10584-024-03767-6