Focus on disaster prevention sharpened

China is building up a national natural disaster evaluation mechanism to strengthen its prevention and reduction capacity in the aftermath of recent blizzards, a senior official said.

Wang Zhenyao, director of the disaster relief bureau of the Ministry of Civil Affairs, said governments at all levels were considering a shift of focus to disaster reduction and relief.

"To establish a disaster evaluation system is a big challenge. We are acting on it with better methods, and evaluation standards," he said.