Asset building and livelihood rebuilding in post-disaster Sichuan, China

Abstract

In May 2008, a severe earthquake struck Sichuan Province, devastating many rural communities. Mudslides followed in 2010, undermining some attempts to rebuild. Despite rapid reconstruction efforts by the Chinese central government, many survivors faced uncertainty and substantial challenges. To support rural survivors' efforts to regain livelihoods and hope, social workers launched several asset-building initiatives in the area. The use of asset building as a strategy to address poverty emerged in the United States in the 1990s and spread to Chinese communities in Taiwan and Hong Kong, but there have been only a few efforts to apply the strategy in rural China. This article discusses the conceptual framework of asset building and details asset-building efforts in disaster-stricken rural communities. The article also documents an evolution in the concept of assets and proposes that the concept should be broadened further to include two additional types of assets: social and cultural.

2008 年 5 月，一场严重的地震袭击了四川省，对许多农村地区造成灾难性影响。随之2010年的山体滑坡又破坏了重建计划。尽管中国中央政府采取迅速的重建措施，许多幸存者仍然面临不确定性及严峻的挑战。为了促进农村幸存者重建家园和重获希望的努力，社会工作者在该地区发动了几次资产建设的的倡议。将资产建设作为一种策略来解决贫困问题在美国开始于20世纪90年代，并传播到了中国的台湾和香港地区。但是这种策略并未在中国农村地区进行广泛运用。本文讨论了资产建设的结构框架，详细阐述了在农村灾区发展资产建设的努力。本文还记录了资产概念的变化，并提议这个概念应该被扩大，囊括两个额外的类型：社会资产和文化资产。

Keywords:

• asset building
• cultural assets
• ecotourism microenterprise
• mudslides
• oral history project
• Qingping County
• Sichuan Province
• social assets
• Wenchuan earthquake

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the contribution of the ZeShan Foundation of Hong Kong. Without their generous funding support, the post-disaster (re)development project in Qingping would not have been possible. I am also grateful to the villagers of Qingping for allowing me and my team to work in their beautiful county.

Notes

1. The author conducted evaluation research for the Hope Development Accounts, but the results of that research are not yet published.

2. Regulations Governing the Post-Disaster Recovery and Reconstruction of the Wenchuan Earthquake, State Council, 20 June 2008, in Guo wu yuan gong bao [State Council Gazette], No. 17, serial 1268 (2008).

3. I use ‘(re)develop’, ‘(re)development’ and the like to indicate that development and redevelopment are intertwined in complex ways in this context.