ABSTRACT
China's natural and constructed hazard regimes are of great significance because of the country's economic strength, consumption of resources, as the source of water for 2 billion people and its centrality to the geo-politically critical Asia-Pacific region. In the international arena, China is presented as a rising superpower, yet this masks the great disparity in wealth, landscapes and livelihoods within the country. China has great natural exposure to climate hazards and, since Mao's 'War on Nature', ever-increasing human-made hazard vulnerability. Droughts, floods and storms are the totemic face of disaster; less obvious are the myriad ways human action increases exposure and alters natural environments. Differentiating what is 'natural' vs. what is 'human' is key to understanding extreme events in China. The concept of a 'constructed' hazard regime identifies anthropogenic forces and conditions that lead or contribute to disaster. In all countries, natural hazards represent the interaction between a physical event and the social context in which it occurs.
