From “Hard” to “Soft” Values Transformation in Disaster Management of Chinese Government = A Case of Wenzhou Train Collision

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The 2011 Wenzhou bulletin train collision was a deadly high-speed railway accident which shocked China and the world. The rail authority declared that train crash was a natural disaster, but the central government investigation team believes that the accident was “a completely avoidable accident” and “should not have happened”. This paper introduces value theory into emergency and disaster management field to assess why different government organizations have two different disaster reason explanations. There are eight core values in public administration, among them, economy, efficiency, effectiveness, and leadership can be classified into hard values, and accountability, transparency, ethics, and professionalism can be classified into soft values. Due to the analysis of train disaster management process, this study found a value transformation in disaster management process, which is in the mitigation, preparation, and response stages, the Chinese government mainly focuses on hard values and lost public trust, and in the recovery stages, the Chinese government turns to soft values and tries to gain the public trust that will answer the question of two explanations. The soft value-oriented disaster management model will also make China safer and lead to good governance.