The Role of Leadership in Public Crisis Management in China

As far as it is concentrated, China's social development has stepped into a period with recurrent public crises. In the theoretical and practical field, "public crisis" is usually defined by "emergency" which was initially classified into four types according to Emergency Response Law of the People's Republic of China. Later then, "One Pre-arranged Plan and Three Systems", the mechanism of public crisis management of China was gradually constructed. In general, leadership can directly conduct crisis management, so the crisis leadership is no doubted to play a crucial role in the crisis management. This article especially stresses that the role-orientation of leadership in treating emergency will affect the consequences of crisis management. Basing on analyzing the characteristics of various types of emergencies by the means of real cases, the author accordingly sums up the key roles of leadership in different crises with a purpose of advancing critical and distinguished crisis leadership.