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Mass Campaigns and Earthquakes: Hai-Ch'eng, 1975

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Gordon Bennett
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Extract

The Chinese term pu-cho (“catch”) an earthquake expresses the Chinese Government's resolve to save lives and property by applying the political techniques of mass mobilization to improve upon the predictive accuracy achievable with fine instruments and professional methods alone. To be more specific, during the most critical stage of the shortrange prediction process the public can contribute large numbers of useful observations not requiring ultra-sensitive instruments.

Type
Reports from China
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 77 , March 1979 , pp. 94 - 112
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1979

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References

1. Our delegation, the second group of American seismologists to visit China sponsored by the Committee on Scholarly Communication with the People's Republic of China, a joint undertaking of the National Academy of Sciences and the Social Science Research Council, was there from 12 to 30 June 1976. Our itinerary included Peking, Shenyang, Anshan, Ying-k'ou, Dairen and Shanghai. The 10-man delegation included eight geologists and geophysicists and Professor Ralph Turner of UCLA, a sociologist specializing in collective behaviour during natural disasters. The full technical report appears as “Prediction of the Haicheng earthquake,” EOS, Vol. 58, No. 5 (05 1977), pp. 236–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I wish to thank Professor Francis Wu of SUNY-Binghamton, a member of our delegation, for many helpful comments on the first draft of this paper. All remaining errors of fact and interpretation, however, are my responsibility alone.

2. New China News Agency (NCNA), 3 April 1976.

3. NCNA, 4 April 1976.

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7. Wen-ta, pp. 93–94.

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17. Bennett, Gordon, Yundong: Mass Campaigns in Chinese Communist Leadership, (Berkeley: University of California, Center for Chinese Studies. China Research Monograph No. 12, 1976)Google Scholar.

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21. Kuang-ming jih-pao, 13 March 1975, p. 4. Peking Review, No. 12 (1975), p. 22Google Scholar. Kuo-feng, Hua, Let the Whole Party Mobilize for a Vast Effort to Develop Agriculture and Build Tachai-Type Counties Throughout the Country (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1975), p. 7Google Scholar.

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28. Liao-nan, p. 43. “A brief summary of the work of premonitory observation, prediction and precautionary measures before the Haicheng earthquake, Liaoning Province, of Magnitude 7·3,” unpublished report presented by Chinese scientists at the Intergovernmental Conference on the Assessment and Mitigation of Earthquake Risks, Paris, lO to 19 02 1976, p. 9Google Scholar. Report of the Canadian Mission, p. 48.