Translated by Claude, edited by Sinocism.com

Source: Qiushi (求是), 2026 No. 16 | Byline: Xi Jinping (习近平) | August 16, 2026

Today we are holding the 25th collective study session of the 20th Central Politburo, on the subject of raising the capacity for disaster prevention, mitigation and relief — mainly to sum up the achievements and experience of disaster prevention, mitigation and relief work in the new era, to analyze the situation and problems we face, and to reflect on how to do this work still better going forward.

今天进行二十届中央政治局第二十五次集体学习，内容是提高防灾减灾救灾能力，主要是总结新时代防灾减灾救灾工作成效和经验，分析面临的形势和问题，对进一步做好这项工作进行思考。

Our country has a vast territory, complex geography and diverse climate, and natural disasters are prone to occur frequently. Since the 18th Party Congress, the Party Central Committee has consistently grasped disaster prevention, mitigation and relief work as a major matter bearing on the people's safety and national security, making many arrangements in the areas of shifting concepts, reforming systems, building frameworks, and raising capacity, and has led the broad ranks of cadres and the masses to overcome a series of major and extraordinary natural disasters, minimizing casualties and property losses — with results recognized the world over.

我国国土广袤、地理复杂、气候多样，自然灾害易发多发。党的十八大以来，党中央坚持把防灾减灾救灾工作作为关系人民安危和国家安全的大事来抓，在理念转变、体制改革、体系建设、能力提升等方面作出许多部署，带领广大干部群众战胜一系列重特大自然灾害，最大限度减少人员伤亡和财产损失，成效举世公认。

In practice we have come to understand profoundly that doing disaster prevention, mitigation and relief work well requires upholding the Party's overall leadership; upholding the supremacy of the people and of life; upholding respect for the laws of nature; upholding prevention as the priority; upholding reform and innovation; upholding a systems approach; and upholding social co-governance. This valuable experience must be upheld and applied well, and continuously enriched and developed in light of new realities.

实践中我们深刻认识到，做好防灾减灾救灾工作，必须坚持党的全面领导，坚持人民至上、生命至上，坚持尊重自然规律，坚持预防为主，坚持改革创新，坚持系统观念，坚持社会共治。这些宝贵经验要坚持好运用好，并结合新的实际不断丰富和发展。

At present, our country's disaster prevention, mitigation and relief work faces no small number of new situations and new problems. With continued global warming, extreme weather and disasters such as rainstorms, floods, typhoons and drought have increased markedly, their destructiveness has intensified, and their distribution in time and space has taken on new changes. The latent threat of major earthquakes and catastrophes is growing; hazards such as geological disasters and forest and grassland fire risk are numerous; and new types of disasters such as glacial-lake outburst floods and seawater intrusion are increasingly appearing. The coupling of various natural disasters is intensifying, and the risk of secondary disasters is rising. We must, from the strategic height of coordinating high-quality development and high-level security, fully recognize the extreme importance of doing disaster prevention, mitigation and relief work well; work hard to build on strengths, make up shortcomings and shore up weak links; continuously raise the capacity and level for guarding against and responding to all kinds of natural disasters; earnestly safeguard the safety of the people's lives and property and social stability; and ensure that Chinese modernization advances steadily and far.

当前，我国防灾减灾救灾工作面临不少新情况新问题。全球气候持续变暖，极端天气和暴雨、洪涝、台风、干旱等灾害显著增多，破坏性加剧，且时空分布出现新变化。大震巨灾的潜在威胁加大，地质灾害、森林草原火险等隐患较多，冰湖溃决、海水倒灌等新型灾害日益显现。各种自然灾害的耦合性增强，次生灾害风险升高。要站在统筹高质量发展和高水平安全的战略高度，充分认识做好防灾减灾救灾工作的极端重要性，着力扬优势、补短板、强弱项，不断提高防范应对各类自然灾害的能力和水平，切实维护人民群众生命财产安全和社会稳定，确保中国式现代化行稳致远。

Below, I want to stress several points.

下面，我强调几点。

First, push disaster governance to shift toward advance prevention. Reducing disaster risk and mitigating disaster losses rests above all on advance prevention. We must uphold source control, running requirements for safety and resilience through territorial spatial planning and all kinds of construction plans, so as to effectively avoid natural-disaster risk. We must strengthen the investigation of hidden hazards, make good use of the results of the national comprehensive natural-disaster risk census, and systematically sort out and precisely identify all kinds of disaster risk. We must intensify engineering treatment, deeply implementing key natural-disaster prevention-and-control projects targeting critical fields and weak links, reasonably raising the fortification standards of key infrastructure in important cities and disaster-prone areas, advancing the construction of dual-use "peacetime-and-emergency" urban public infrastructure, and urgently making up the shortfalls in flood-control, drainage and disaster-resistance infrastructure in northern regions. We must strengthen priority prevention and control of high-risk sites where people are relatively concentrated — the mouths of mountain gullies, flood-discharge channels, and areas next to slopes and cliffs — and, through engineering treatment, hazard-avoidance relocation, and prohibition-and-restriction management, effectively bring down existing risk and curb newly added risk.

**第一，推动灾害治理向事前预防转型。**降低灾害风险，减轻灾害损失，重在事前预防。要坚持源头管控，将安全韧性要求贯穿国土空间规划及各类建设规划之中，有效规避自然灾害风险。要加强隐患排查，用好全国自然灾害综合风险普查成果，系统梳理、精准识别各类灾害风险。要强化工程治理，针对关键领域和薄弱环节深入实施自然灾害防治重点工程，合理提高重要城市和灾害多发地区关键基础设施设防标准，推进城市平急两用公共基础设施建设，加紧补齐北方地区防洪排涝抗灾基础设施短板。要加强对人口相对聚集的山沟沟口、行洪河道、临坡临崖等高风险地段的重点防控，通过工程治理、避险搬迁、禁限管理等措施，有效压降存量风险、遏制新增风险。

Second, raise the capacity to respond to and handle major disasters and catastrophes. Whenever a natural disaster occurs, we must respond actively, ensuring that every disaster brings relief and every peril brings rescue. For severe natural disasters, we must all the more make solid and meticulous response preparations. We must firmly establish bottom-line thinking and worst-case thinking, deeply study and judge where the risks of major disasters and catastrophes may lie, how to guard against them and how to carry out rescue, and continuously improve emergency plans — estimating difficulties and challenges more fully and considering work measures more comprehensively. We must improve the monitoring and early-warning system, coordinating technological innovation, facility layout and information sharing, racing against time and against the danger, and improving the timeliness, precision and reach of warnings. We must improve the emergency command mechanism under the framework of "big safety, big emergency response," accelerate the building of the national comprehensive fire-and-rescue force and national regional emergency-rescue centers, raise rescue capacity under extreme conditions, and ensure that at critical moments the forces can be deployed, can charge in, and can prevail. Major disasters and catastrophes have a broad reach, strong interconnection and great destructive power; we must coordinate comprehensive rescue, transitional resettlement and recovery-and-reconstruction work, and prevent natural-disaster risk from transmitting and spreading into fields such as economic security, energy and resource security, food security and social security. We are a socialist country, and we must hand in an outstanding answer sheet in every major disaster and major test, fully demonstrating the superiority of the socialist system.

**第二，提升大灾巨灾应对处置能力。**只要发生自然灾害，我们就要积极应对，做到有灾必救、有险必抢。对严重自然灾害，更要扎实细致做好应对准备。要树牢底线思维、极限思维，深入研判大灾巨灾风险可能在哪里，该怎么防、如何救，不断完善应急预案，把困难和挑战估计得更充分一些，把工作举措考虑得更周全一些。要健全监测预警体系，统筹推进技术创新、设施布局和信息共享，跟时间和险情赛跑，提高预警的及时性、精准性、通达性。要健全大安全大应急框架下应急指挥机制，加快推进国家综合性消防救援队伍和国家区域应急救援中心建设，提高极端情况下的救援能力，确保关键时刻拉得出、冲得上、打得赢。大灾巨灾影响面广、关联性强、破坏力大，要统筹做好综合救援、过渡安置和恢复重建工作，防止自然灾害风险向经济安全、能源资源安全、粮食安全、社会安全等领域传导和扩散。我们是社会主义国家，一定要在每一次大灾大考中交出优异答卷，充分彰显社会主义制度的优越性。

Third, strengthen scientific-technological support and rule-of-law safeguards. On the science and technology side, we must give full play to the advantages of the new-type whole-nation system, promote scientific and industrial innovation in the emergency field, and build up the strength of disaster prevention, mitigation and relief. We must strengthen emergency-discipline construction and talent cultivation, deeply conduct basic research on natural disasters, and strive to grasp the laws of the formation and evolution of natural disasters. We must advance breakthroughs in key technologies such as monitoring and early warning, emergency communications, life detection, and search and rescue; strengthen the application of technical means such as artificial intelligence, satellite remote sensing, big data, the Internet of Things and drones; and strengthen the R&D and provisioning of advanced, applicable equipment. We must deepen international scientific and technological exchange and cooperation on disaster prevention, mitigation and relief, and actively draw on the useful experience and practices of other countries. On the rule-of-law side, we must improve the rule-of-law system in the emergency field, formulate and revise relevant laws and regulations in a timely manner as needed, combine improved legislation with strict enforcement, and further raise the level of rule of law in disaster prevention, mitigation and relief.

**第三，强化科技支撑和法治保障。**科技方面，要充分发挥新型举国体制优势，推动应急领域科技创新和产业创新，增强防灾减灾救灾实力。加强应急学科建设和人才培养，深入开展自然灾害基础研究，努力把握自然灾害形成演变规律。推进监测预警、应急通信、生命探测、救援搜救等关键技术攻关，强化人工智能、卫星遥感、大数据、物联网、无人机等技术手段运用，加强先进适用装备研发和配备。深化国际防灾减灾救灾科技交流合作，积极借鉴其他国家有益经验和做法。法治方面，要健全应急领域法治体系，根据需要及时制定修订相关法律法规，把完善立法和严格执法结合起来，进一步提升防灾减灾救灾法治化水平。

Fourth, consolidate the grassroots foundations of disaster prevention, mitigation and relief. The grassroots is the first line of defense against natural disasters, and the work of strengthening the grassroots and consolidating foundations must never be relaxed. We must push resources and forces down to lower levels, improve the grassroots emergency-rescue force system, staff emergency-rescue forces fully and strongly in accordance with regulations, and strengthen the construction of emergency sites and the provisioning of materials and equipment. We must encourage and support the building of social emergency forces, give play to the role of mass organizations, volunteer service and other bodies, and improve the system of mass monitoring, mass prevention and mass governance. We must intensify popular-science publicity on disaster prevention, mitigation and relief, conduct targeted drills for self-rescue and mutual rescue, and raise the whole population's awareness of and capacity for disaster prevention and hazard avoidance. We must do public-opinion guidance work well and release relevant information promptly and accurately.