On May 19, 11:23=A0am, Micky Wong <micky...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> Some Serious Questions for a Calamitous "Olympic Host" -- An honest
> accounting of China's disaster / IHT
>
> International Herald Tribune
> An honest accounting of China's disaster
>
> Monday, May 19, 2008
>
> Chinese leaders are being far more open about the earthquake in Sichuan
> Province than their predecessors were after a similar disaster in 1976,
> and more open than the Burmese junta after a cyclone devastated much of
> the country earlier this month.
I think its because the CCP knows that it is only by listening
to those directly effected by this disaster they can effectively
determine challenges that needs to be addressed.
The earthquake has left many people homeless - from what I
hear there is a need for need tents and blankets - atleast
tem****arily until more permanent housing can be setup .
>
> But the presence in Sichuan of Chinese and foreign re****ters reveals
> only part of the story. A better test of China's new transparency will
> be whether the government lets re****ters investigate whether human
> failings, official or otherwise, contributed to thousands of deaths.
I hope the China does a better job of handling this disaster
than we handled the USA Katrina Hurricane disaster. (9_9)
=46rom what I've gather there are many people who still need
and are looking for help - the scope of this disaster is so large
that the press is probably the last thing on the government's
mind. A 7.8 richter scale earthquake is equivalent to 600
Megatons of TNT - even in the USA there aren't that many
structures that would have a chance of surviving that kind of
brutal power. Japan is the only country in the world that has
invested heavily into quake proofing their buildings and only the
newest buildings are quake proof -- many of their older
buildings are not.
>
> The extent of the tragedy would have been hard to conceal. Video of the
> quake was up on YouTube shortly after the first tremors Monday. And
> Chinese society is far more open to outsiders and to its own people than
> it was under the Maoist Gang of Four in 1976, when an earthquake
> devastated the north. Prime Minister Wen Jiabao arrived at the affected
> part of Sichuan within hours of the disaster, and news crews followed.
>
> The central government is moving quickly to shape news coverage. A
> Politburo member is re****ted to have told a meeting of propaganda
> officials Tuesday that the media need to "uphold unity and encourage
> stability." Live broadcasts from a television station in Chengdu, the
> provincial capital, were stopped. The government and the Communist Party
> want to regulate openness as though it were water from a tap.
After a major disaster - Live TV broadcaste is not as im****tant
as providing emergency information - e.g. emergency radio
freqencies, relief centers, bridge/road outages, mass transit
status and access, identifying disaster areas, and soforth.
During emergency - mass media needs to sup****t assisting
those who may need help in a disaster.
>
> Yet any Chinese citizen who reads about the disaster or sees images from
> the scene must be seared by the devastation: children hoping for rescue
> under the rubble of a school; parents' cries of anguish over the bodies
> of their young; survivors scrambling for food or staring hopelessly at
> the remains of their homes. Once the shock of devastation is past, many
> Chinese people will crave not stability but an honest accounting.
>
When a person is in the mist of trouble - they don't care about
*accounting* - all they want is assistance to get out of trouble.
It's only when help never comes and victims are left to their own
devices that they start looking for some *accounting*. When
Katrina bashed into the USA - initially - all the victims wanted
was some assistance - they didn't care where it came from.
The victims don't have the energy or the interest in a
muckraking press.
It was only after the government failed to provide any
meaningful assistance that people having nothing better
to do -- started looking for some kind of "honest accounting"
from their government. Today the Katrina Hurricane
is considered one of the Bush Administration's biggest
domestic disaster blunders - after the press muckraking
about the Katrina Hurricane disaster was done - nothing
really changed for the victims of Hurricane Katrina -
-- so the suggested assumption by this author that
the press can be a kind of catylst for change
is not always true.
> People who live in societies with a free press often disparage its
> excesses, for good reason. But in a disaster of national significance,
> the news media would soon move from coverage of the immediate impact to
> inquiries into its causes.
With western mass media - its not what you know that gets your story
told but
who you know inside the mass media who are willing to help you. Some
mass
media sources might be friendly - other might be less than friendly.
Some western
media sources has a tendency to be antagonistic not only against the
CCP
but against the chinese people - so there are times they'll twist the
truth
( by only re****ting part of the facts ) and other times they will
suggest or flatly
state a falsehoods if they think they can get away with it.
With respects to disasters of national significance, the
mass media covered the blunders of the Katrina Hurricane
disaster - but it was not very useful in mitigating the disaster .
The cause of the disaster was apparent - the hurricane.
It would have been more useful if the local mass media had
worked more closely with the federal and local governments to
coordinate the disaster relief programs.
As a local community activist, I haven't found the mass media
in the USA to be very helpful when it comes to strengthening
local building codes, urban planning, and emergency prepareness.
Building grass root organizations that advocate strengthening local
building codes, urban planning, and emergency prepareness
would be more effective route. Such undertakings require a vast
amount of expertise that normally require the sup****t of
many dedicated individuals.
>
> Why, for instance, did schools collapse? Were building codes enforced,
> or were they inadequate to limit the damage? If construction was faulty,
> who is to blame? Given the size and resources of China, was the response
> to the disaster up to the task?
>
A 7.8 richter scale earthquake is going to level almost everything
in sight unless you have a specially quake proofed structures.
There are re****ts that some chinese government building in
Dujiangyan survived while a nearby school building did not.
Re****tedly, the school building was previously know to
have serious defects before the quake - However, it's unclear
whether the defects were a sufficient cause for the
building's collapse during the earthquake .
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nathan-gardels/chinas-earthquake-casualt_b_101=
800.html
> If the past is any guide, Chinese leaders may find a local scapegoat to
> imprison or execute, but will be loath to permit a critical examination
> of the causes. That might turn up evidence of the corruption that
> pervades Chinese society, including the government and party.
>
False.
Unlike many other nations in the world, the CCP appears to
be willing to convict and executed corrupt government and party
officials. The top Chinese official for its food and drug agency
was executed for his involvement in the tainted drug and
food incidents in China ( Zheng Xiaoyu, July 2007).[1].
[1]
http://www.wa****ngtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/09/AR2007070900=
689.html
However, killing poorly performing government officials
is pretty drastic by western standards. While many lambasted
Michael Brown [2] , the USA FEMA head, for his performance
with regards to the Katrina Hurricane Disaster - nobody
demanded that he be executed. In fact, Mr. Brown was
well compensated (9_9).
[2]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Brown
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