Planning and Recovery Following the Great 1976 Tangshan Earthquake

Urban Planning Context in China

The Tangshan earthquake occurred toward the end of the Cultural Revolution (1960 to 1978). The political turmoil that existed during this period not only stalled socioeconomic development in China but also halted and even reversed the institutional capacity the young socialist country had developed since its founding in 1949. ⁸

When China was founded, the new government subscribed to the Soviet model of centrally planned development for socioeconomic and urban development. Urban planning was introduced as a means to implement the state-planned development goals, ⁹ to establish the political legitimacy of the socialist state, ¹⁰ and to implement social control. ¹¹ The national government assumed dominant control over commercial and industrial activities, land allocation, and fiscal decisions. ¹² Consequently, local planning during this period was largely the exclusive practice of bureaucratized technocrats and featured a strong focus on physical planning. There was little opportunity to include social analysis or articulate local needs into the planning process. ¹³ During this period, the institution of planning was first introduced to Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Tangshan, and other major Chinese cities that hosted state-run enterprises. In 1956, Tangshan prepared its first comprehensive development plan.

China’s political environment became increasingly unstable, beginning in 1958. ¹⁴ The failure of the Great Leap Forward (1958–1959) ¹⁵ and a deteriorating relationship with the Soviet Union shifted the central government’s development focus from large cities to the expansion of agriculture and small cities in the hinterland. When political ties to the Soviet Union were severed, Soviet Union’s influence on the new government’s institution-building efforts was also quickly removed. Due to its Soviet roots, the National Economic Planning Meeting announced the abandonment of urban planning in 1960. ¹⁶ In 1966, when the Cultural Revolution officially started, urban planning as an institution was totally dismantled. The discontinuation of urban planning lasted more than twelve years. Only after China initiated its reform in late 1978 was urban planning reinstituted. When the Tangshan earthquake struck in 1976, urban planning in China had been dysfunctional for many years. Tangshan had not engaged in any systematic planning or plan updates for nearly twenty years.

Tangshan Prior to the Earthquake

Prior to the earthquake, Tangshan had roughly sixty-six km² of developed area and contained an urban population of 500,000. ¹⁷ The city was a key center of heavy industry in China’s planned economy. There were over 400 industrial mining, steel, power, heavy equipment, and cement production companies within the city boundary. ¹⁸ The urban area comprised of three administrative districts—Lunan, Lubei, and Dongkuang. The former two districts were clustered in the city center. Dongkuang, separated by rural land in between, was located some twenty km to the east (Figure 1). This unusual layout came about because Dongkuang was primarily an industrial park that housed several large state-run enterprises. These companies had well over 75,000 employees at the time of the earthquake. In a sense, this district was largely a city of its own, even though it was officially part of Tangshan’s administrative territory.

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Figure 1.

Tangshan’s urban area prior to the earthquake. Source: The map is recreated based on Tangshan Urban Planning Bureau. The 1976 Tangshan Master Earthquake Recovery Plan (Tangshan, China, 2009).

The Tangshan region is located at the junction of several fault zones and the area has a long history of seismic activity. ¹⁹ The Yanshan fault runs through the northern part of the region. In the south, four northeast trending fault zones lie beneath the surface. One of these active fault lines cuts directly across the city’s Lunan district. In spite of this danger, the buildings in Tangshan—mostly one to three-story brick or masonry structures—were neither designed nor built to standards that were adequate for this degree of seismic risk (Figure 2). Only the industrial buildings in some of the large state-owned enterprises were adequately engineered. China adopted the National Seismic Building Standards in 1959 and later strengthened the codes in 1974 and 1975 following the Tonghai and Haicheng earthquakes. ²⁰ However, the seismic codes were poorly enforced and the substandard buildings in Tangshan were widely credited as the primary reason for the massive number of fatalities and damage sustained when the earthquake struck in 1976. ²¹

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Figure 2.

The first picture shows typical brick masonry residential buildings in the city of Tangshan prior to the earthquake. The second picture shows the vulnerability of these structurally deficient buildings to seismic damage. Source: Pictures are reproduced from S. Yang, Lessons from the Tangshan and Haicheng Earthquakes (Beijing: China Architectural Industry Press, 1985).

August 1976–September 1979: Recovery Planning—Betterment Goals Dominated the Agenda

The earthquake completely incapacitated the city and the first semblance of an organized response was not seen until several days later when the national government set up an ad hoc Headquarters for Response and Relief on the Tangshan military airfield. While the immediate focus was on the emergency response and the provision of disaster relief, the Headquarters did begin to develop a recovery plan shortly after the earthquake. On August 8, 1976, thirteen days after the earthquake, the Headquarters formed a planning task force. ²² A team of more than sixty engineers, architects, geoscientists, and surveyors—assembled from all over the country—joined this planning effort. ²³ With few historical planning documents or basic data to guide them, the planning team faced the daunting task of drafting a recovery plan from scratch.

The first draft of the Tangshan Recovery Master Plan (1976) was finished and approved by the State Council on May 14, 1977, about ten months after the earthquake. ²⁴ Shortly after the plan was adopted, the president of China, Hua Guofeng, visited the earthquake area. During his visit, he declared that the recovery should “demonstrate the superiority of China’s socialist system” ²⁵ by “making Tangshan the safest city in the world.” ²⁶ Following his direction, over 100 architects, designers, and engineers from fourteen provinces gathered in Tangshan from January 1978 to September 1979 to make further changes to the recovery plan. More focus was put on seismic risk reduction by upgrading neighborhood design standards and building codes.

Overall recovery principles of the 1976 plan

While the members of the recovery planning task force agreed that a significant land use change was necessary to reduce the city’s vulnerability to seismic risks, ²⁷ they disagreed on the proper approach to accomplish this goal. Some favored a relocation of the entire city. They were concerned about the expense associated with debris removal and the enduring seismic risk if the city was built in the same location. They also argued that the debris removal would significantly delay the recovery process. Others supported the idea of rebuilding the city where it was. They posited that seismic risk mitigation should be achieved by neighborhood-level land adjustments such as development set backs from the fault lines and more stringent seismic building codes. They were against the relocation strategy, citing reasons such as historical preservation of the old city, the high cost of relocation, the social discontent that would stem from relocation, and the challenge of assembling enough land to build a new city further away from the fault zone.

The final plan incorporated ideas from both groups. ²⁸ Different development strategies were proposed for the three urban districts (Figure 4). The Lubei and Dongkuang districts would be redeveloped in their original locations. The Lunan district, bisected by an active fault line, had the highest seismic risk and suffered near total destruction during the earthquake. This district would not be redeveloped, but rather preserved as open space. Its population and thirty-eight industrial companies would be relocated to the new Fengrun district, which was to be built in a low-risk location northwest of the old urban center. To support the population and industrial needs of this new district, power plants and water treatment facilities were also planned for Fengrun.

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Figure 4.

Tangshan’s urban area envisioned in the 1976 recovery plan. Source: The map is recreated based on the Tangshan Urban Planning Bureau, The 1976 Tangshan Master Earthquake Recovery Plan (Tangshan, China, 2009).

At the neighborhood level, the recovery plan highlighted strategies for seismic risk avoidance and mitigation. ²⁹ It included detailed site selection principles and required an assessment of the geologic conditions and the natural hazards risk for any development projects. The plan emphasized retaining sufficient open space (for emergency evacuation) between buildings and within a neighborhood. This represented a drastic change from the preearthquake development pattern in Tangshan, which was characterized by buildings constructed side by side in close proximity to each other with narrow alleys running in between.

The recovery plan’s betterment goals focused beyond seismic risk mitigation. The plan also sought to address land use and pollution problems that had plagued the old city. First, the plan delineated residential zones and industrial zones that separated the residential neighborhoods from pollution-intensive industrial sites. In addition, the plan strengthened the idea that the old urban center (i.e., Lubei district) should be exclusively residential. Industrial companies in this area were scheduled to move out to the Dongkuang district in the east or the new Fengshun district to the north. This would significantly ease the air pollution problem for the population living in the urban core. Second, the plan sought to improve the city’s infrastructure systems. Three new sewage treatment facilities and water plants were planned to expand running water service to the whole city. Also, efforts were made to reduce the fragmentation of the urban area. A highway bypass was planned to divert traffic out of the city and there was a plan to reroute the rail lines that had previously bisected the urban area.

Permanent housing

The recovery plan set a five-year target to finish the transition from temporary housing to 230,000 permanent housing units. ³¹ The plan detailed a set of design principles that sought to improve residents’ quality of life and to increase seismic safety in the residential areas ³² (Figure 5).

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Figure 5.

A view of the city of Tangshan in 1982 when the recovery was still in progress. The recovery paid great attention to seismic risk reduction. Most residential buildings were six-story reinforced concrete structures with very similar designs. The street width and open space between buildings were much greater than they were before the earthquake. Source: This picture is reproduced from Yao, Achievements of the Tangshan Earthquake Recovery (Beijing: China Architectural Industry Press, 1997).

First, all neighborhood designs contained a balanced distribution of residential units and support facilities such as shopping and schools. Second, all neighborhood designs provided adequate open space for leisure activities and evacuation routes in the event of an emergency. Third, building density within each residential neighborhood was kept within 25 percent to 30 percent ground coverage ratio and the peak population density was limited to 600/ha. The building codes required reinforced concrete, so that all residential buildings would maintain structural integrity during intensity VIII earthquakes. Also, the codes implemented different height limits for residential buildings based on the assessed level of seismic risk. Areas with a relatively high seismic risk were restricted to heights of two to three stories and areas with relatively low seismic risk were permitted to build up to five and six stories. No buildings with more than six stories were permitted anywhere in the planning area.

October 1979—February 1982: Recovery Plan Adjustments—Toward a More Pragmatic Approach

While there was a lot of planning in the first three years, the actual recovery progress fell short of people’s expectations. This was especially true in the housing sector, which failed to transition from temporary housing to permanent housing at an acceptable pace. The prolonged process prompted many residents to convert their temporary housing units into semipermanent buildings that offered better—if not desirable—living conditions. ³³ These informal projects, not sanctioned by the recovery plan or regulated by the building codes, featured a wide variety of designs. In most cases, they were simple two- and three-story apartment buildings built by local companies or government agencies for their employees.

In the Lunan district, where rebuilding was prohibited by the recovery plan, a lot of semipermanent structures were erected in their predisaster locations. Four years after the earthquake, this district had an estimated population of 174,000. On the other hand, the planned Fengrun district, where the residents and companies in the Lunan district were directed to relocate, struggled to attract people. The planned power plant, water treatment facility, and major roads that would connect this district to the old city center did not progress in accordance with the housing projects. ³⁴ The failure to provide infrastructure on pace to meet the needs of the development it was intended to support made the relocation, both for households and for businesses, very undesirable.

Funding problems

The disconnection between the planned vision and timely, sufficient provision of funding was a major factor that slowed the recovery progress. The budget for the recovery was originally set at 2 billion Yuan (1976 value, 1.03 billion USD) in the 1976 plan. It included 1.55 billion Yuan from the central government appropriation and another 450 million Yuan from the city of Tangshan and donations from other municipalities and provinces in China. ³⁵ However, the central state did not have the ability to disburse funds on time as specified in the plan. ³⁶ Table 1 compares the amount of committed recovery funding from the central government and the actual amount appropriated during the first three years following the earthquake. There was a significant funding gap across almost all recovery categories. Only slightly more than 68 percent of the funding for housing recovery was ever realized and about 78 percent of the funding for infrastructure and lifeline facilities was actually allocated.

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Table 1.

Committed Recovery Funding and Realized Amount between 1978 and 1980 (in million Yuan).

Recovery project categories	Committed funding	Realized funding	Percentage
Housing	505.7	346.6	68.5
Industrial facilities	240.1	187.4	78.1
Urban infrastructure and lifeline facilities	102.3	85.8	83.8
Government facilities	11.6	6.5	56.0
Culture, education, and public health	27.9	15.7	56.2
Construction equipment	87.6	87.6	100.0
Equipment repair	26.1	26.1	100.0
Construction material	63.8	57.7	90.4
Financial and trade	30.1	3.6	11.9
Other	121.9	97.3	79.8
Total	1,217.1	914.3	75.12

Source: This table is created using data reported in Yaoxian Ye, “Decision makings following a catastrophic earthquake,” in Proceedings of the First Main-land China-Taiwan Joint Earthquake Conference (Beijing, China: China Earthquake Press, 1992), 22–31.

The funding crisis was related to China’s overall financial situation in the late 1970s as well as the preference given to repairing industrial facilities over other sectors. China was just beginning to emerge from the Cultural Revolution when the earthquake struck and the weak national economy teetered on the brink of collapse. ³⁷ This bleak economic environment severely limited the government’s capacity to fund the recovery. In addition, the national government was responsible for rebuilding a large number of severely damaged state-owned industrial facilities. Many of these facilities (e.g., steel, railway rolling stock, ceramics, and cement) had strategic importance both to the ongoing recovery of Tangshan and the larger national economy. They often took priority over other projects when competing for scarce financial resources.

As the recovery dragged on, the serious funding shortages and cost increases of the proposed projects forced the central government to adopt a strict lump-sum model of recovery funding. ³⁸ Projects were paid out all at once, with no opportunity for adjustments. If the actual costs turned out to be higher than the estimates, the contractors, mainly subnational governmental entities, had to absorb the price difference. This policy provided strong incentive for contractors to find ways to reduce construction costs. Often times, this was accomplished by lowering the construction quality standards.

March 1982—October 1986: Achieving Recovery—A Better Place with a Compromised Outcome

There were no other major plan modifications after the 1982 amendments. In the following years, permanent housing, the top recovery priority, accounted for more than 60 percent of the newly finished floor area each year. ⁴⁴ In October 1986, the last group of about 4,500 households finally made the transition to permanent housing. The earthquake recovery in Tangshan officially came to an end when the permanent housing recovery was completed in October 1986. This process took a little more than ten years, twice as long as the original five-year target set forth in the 1976 recovery plan.

The city of Tangshan in 1986 was a much better place than it was before the earthquake. ⁴⁵ The key infrastructure system within the city was mostly upgraded and modernized. Many buildings were built to appropriate seismic standards and most were stronger than the pre-1976 structures. The new neighborhoods were built with more open space and better access to transportation services. Planners and builders made good use of the new geological surveys and the related siting and foundation information, often times locating buildings in more suitable locations. This information and these practices undoubtedly had a positive influence on the continued evolution of the new Tangshan.

Nevertheless, the city was very different from what was originally envisioned in the 1976 plan. ⁴⁶ The Lunan district was largely rebuilt in its previous location, rather than being preserved as open space. On the other hand, Fengrun, the planned new town, only partially materialized. About 79,000 people lived in this district in 1986, ten years after the earthquake. This figure was 21 percent behind the five-year target set forth in the 1976 recovery plan. Similarly, the relocation of the industrial companies from the urban center to the Fengrun district also progressed much slower than what was envisioned in the plan. Only 20 percent of the five-year relocation target was achieved by 1986.

The urban infrastructure betterment projects set forth in the plan also failed to fully materialize. ⁴⁷ Three sewage treatment facilities and water plants were planned, but by 1986 only one had been constructed. For a long time, only one-third of the residents in Tangshan had sporadic running water service. People heavily depended on the same traditional wells they had used before the earthquake. The planned expressway, designed to bypass the urban area and prevent through traffic from entering the urban center, was never constructed. The rerouting of the rail line away from the populated Lubei district was an unrealized goal ten years after the quake.

Ten Years after the Earthquake and Beyond—Defying the Trajectory of the Past

Although the earthquake recovery in Tangshan took ten years to complete and the overall outcome was somewhat compromised, the extensive disaster damage and a national effort to rebuild did provide the city the opportunity to modernize almost its entire capital stock. After the reconstruction was finished in 1986, Tangshan emerged from the recovery with a modern built environment and stood out in stark comparison to most other Chinese cities in the mid-1980s, whose development capacity was greatly restricted by outdated infrastructure and chaotic land use patterns that has developed over the cities’ long preindustrial histories. ⁴⁸ In addition, because of Tangshan’s significance to China’s planned economy before the earthquake, the national government invested heavily to upgrade and rejuvenate the city’s old industrial facilities during the earthquake recovery. All these factors enabled the city to capitalize on the opportunity presented by the socioeconomic revolution in China that began in the 1980s and took strong hold after the 1990s. ⁴⁹ Within the changing national economic environment, Tangshan was able to build on its legacy as the “cradle of China’s industrialization” and its development after 1986 was a success story that was not expected at all by the recovery planners. Figure 6 presents a comparison between per capita gross regional product (GRP) in Tangshan as a ratio to per capita GRP in China and that of Hebei Province. Despite the rather volatile trajectory during the ten years of the earthquake recovery, ⁵⁰ Tangshan’s economic development after the mid-1980s well outperformed China as a whole or Hebei, its hosting province.

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Figure 6.

Tangshan’s economic development in comparison to China and Hebei Province. Source: The figure was recreated based on Wu et al., Post-disaster Recovery and Economic Impact of the Catastrophes in China (Beijing, China: Beijing Normal University, 2014).

In 2009, the city registered a total revenue of 41.33 billion Yuan and a disposable per capita income of 18,000 Yuan. ⁵¹ These numbers are, respectively, forty-four times and twenty-four times higher than the figures in 1986. Bolstered by strong economic growth, the city’s built environment and infrastructure support systems have been reinvented and reengineered in recent years. ⁵² The six-story limit for buildings constructed during the recovery period has long since expired. Many high-rise residential and commercial buildings have been developed (Figure 7). Some buildings constructed during the recovery period have already been torn down to make space for new development. Wide modern streets, a light-rail system, a new airport, and attractive green space corridors now support Tangshan’s urban area. Limited-access highways and high-speed rail provide fast connections to the larger region. The industrial facilities, especially those with high pollution levels, have finally been upgraded and relocated to planned industrial parks in the suburbs.

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Figure 7.

A bird’s-eye view of Tangshan in 2009. The medium-rise buildings in the front are apartment buildings built during the recovery period. The high-rise apartment buildings were built in recent years.

Although the planned Fengrun district did not progress on schedule during the recovery period, its population and economy quickly swelled after the mid-1980s. ⁵³ This district now has more than 400,000 people and about fifty km² of built-up area, well beyond the size laid out in the 1976 recovery plan. The Lunan and Lubei districts in the urban center also experienced fast expansion. These two districts now have a combined population of more than 2 million residents.

Tangshan’s Legacy for the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake

Thirty-two years after the Tangshan earthquake, China was hit by another catastrophic earthquake. On May 12, 2008, an 8.0-magnitude earthquake struck southwest China, affecting more than 100,000 square miles and 30 million people. It caused 69,226 deaths, with another 17,923 people officially reported as missing, and 1,486,405 people needing to be relocated. The Wenchuan earthquake affected 417 counties in ten provinces. In Sichuan Province alone, more than 216,000 buildings were destroyed. Some towns and many villages were completely destroyed, especially in Beichuan County and Wenchuan County. ⁶⁶

A detailed comparison of planning and recovery after the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake and the 1976 Tangshan earthquake is presented in another article. However, in light of this study, it is worthwhile to discuss the legacy of Tangshan’s experience on the recovery following the Wenchuan earthquake.

The planning and recovery after the Wenchuan earthquake shared similarities with what happened three decades ago in Tangshan. In both cases, the central state played a decisive role in developing recovery plans, designing a recovery vision and goals, and financing the recovery. On the day of the Wenchuan earthquake, the disaster relief and response headquarters was established by China’s State Council to lead the overall response and recovery effort. The planning group within the headquarters, headed by the National Development and Reform Commission, was formed ten days later. The final comprehensive recovery plan viewed the recovery as an opportunity to advance a host of national development priorities that were already adopted by the central government prior to the earthquake. Some examples included urbanization, rural–urban integration, and the construction of new socialist rural villages. ⁶⁷ The majority of recovery funds were either directly appropriated or arranged by the central state. ⁶⁸ In both cases, the recovery planning overtly focused on physical planning. Although the two earthquakes were three decades apart, the norms of urban planning in China continued to maintain the long-standing tradition of physical planning. ⁶⁹ Social analysis and private interests were still not well incorporated into the process.

Despite their similarities, planning and recovery after these two earthquakes differed in several ways. The Chinese government learned from Tangshan’s slow recovery and made recovery speed the top priority after the Wenchuan earthquake. ⁷⁰ The comprehensive recovery plan for the Wenchuan earthquake was developed and approved by the State Council in little over three months after the event. Within the framework of the comprehensive plan, ten specialized sectorial recovery plans were developed by year’s end. ⁷¹ This is in stark contrast to the Tangshan case where the central state took more than three years to agree on the first recovery plan.

It was clear that the Chinese government did not want to repeat Tangshan’s slow housing recovery and the negative socioeconomic consequences it created. Temporary housing and the transition to permanent housing were the clear policy priorities in the Wenchuan earthquake recovery plan. ⁷² Temporary housing parks were developed in designated areas and adhered to design guidelines. In most cases, they were located in open space and created little interference with the recovery in subsequent years. Four months after the earthquake, 677,000 temporary housing units were completed. All displaced residents were either settled in the temporary housing parks or through other means (e.g., rental vouchers). The transition to permanent housing also progressed at a rapid pace. By the end of 2010, 5.3 million permanent housing units were either developed or repaired and the transition to permanent housing was accomplished for nearly all residents.

It should be noted that while the Chinese government learned their lesson from the Tangshan earthquake recovery, the fast physical reconstruction following the Wenchuan earthquake would have hardly been conceivable had China’s planning capacity, development capacity, and financial situation not improved significantly in the intervening three decades. It is interesting to question whether China has learned the correct lessons from its past disaster recovery experience. If viewed by its focus on spatial planning and recovery speed, especially in the housing sector, one can claim that the Wenchuan earthquake recovery corrected the biggest errors of the Tangshan earthquake recovery. However, the success in physical planning and recovery should not be viewed as an endorsement of the overall success of the recovery. The postdisaster planning and recovery after the Wenchuan earthquake has its own failures, particularly in the areas of social and livelihood recovery. ⁷³

Final Remarks

The 1976 Tangshan earthquake in China, among the deadliest natural disasters in the world, almost leveled a city with more than 500,000 people. The postdisaster planning and recovery of Tangshan was an illustrative microcosm of the planning culture and the evolving national politics since the mid-1970s. The early recovery planning was driven by the central state’s ideological beliefs. The plan focused on physical improvements to the city, but failed to adequately address the needs of its citizens. This centralized arrangement initially mobilized an effective emergency response, but it proved incapable of addressing the complex and time-sensitive nature of disaster recovery. The reform that started in the late 1970s marked China’s shift to a more pragmatic approach toward development. Within this context, the Tangshan recovery plan was fundamentally adjusted in 1982. Although the earthquake recovery was a turbulent, ten-year process, Tangshan emerged as a city with a much-improved built environment. This allowed the city to capitalize on the national economic reform, and Tangshan has maintained a strong growth trajectory decades after the earthquake recovery.

Tangshan’s story, after accounting for the uniqueness of China’s planning institution and the context of its evolving sociopolitical environment since the 1970s, highlights several general issues associated with postdisaster planning and recovery, which are very different from planning and development under normal conditions. The concentration of damage and the need to rebuild all sectors in a time-constrained environment can create unique challenges. First, stakeholders who control the planning process and the recovery resources can easily dominate the recovery goal setting. As a result, planning runs a high risk of being disconnected from local residents’ recovery needs and priorities. Second, postdisaster recovery inevitably involves short-term actions to meet residents’ immediate needs in conjunction with long-term actions to rebuild the damaged area. Without good planning and coordination, immediate actions could become an impediment to long-term recovery activities. Finally, a recovery plan can only be as good as the extent to which recovery funds are provided on time and in sufficient amount. When multiple funding sources are involved, the varied immediacy of fund accessibility from different sources can prolong the recovery progress.