When there was trouble in Tibet China stopped the worlds media from seeing what was happening. They paid a high price and eventually ended up in some form of talks with the Dalai Lama – although I am not wildly optimistic about the outcome.
Then the earthquake strikes and China opens up to the world in a way that they were previously very reluctant to do. Media coverage is dangerous for the government of China because the population knows that modern buildings should be able to withstand even severe quakes of this type. We are already hearing the population complaining about corruption and poor building standards.
What we are witnessing is a China that is struggling between the old authoritarian and secretive mode and the modern and open system of government that is necessary if the country really is to be able to complete the modernisation process.
Sometimes this is about an internal struggle. I am reminded of a visit to the Labour party by a senior Chinese Communist party (which means government) delegation in the 1990’s who wanted to know how a modern political party works. At the end of the visit I took the group onto the terrace of the House of Commons for a drink. Their leader asked me how I thought China was doing. A big question! I replied that I thought they were doing very well on the economy, and that I was impressed by the efforts they were making to introduce the rule of law even though they had some way to go. I then said that I was worried about their inability to deal with a crisis of leadership because they had no democratic way of changing leaders and China’s history is very problematic in this respect. His reply was wonderful. He leaned forward and said “You may be worried Mr Soley, but not as worried as we are”! So I knew they were aware of the critical importance of this issue. Other members of the leadership in China would not have said this and would have tried to reassure me that the Communist Party would always do the right thing.
Finally my visitor asked me what advice I could give them on governing China! I pointed out that we had difficulty governing Britain at times and we only had a population of 60 million, so I wanted to be a bit cautious in my advice! We had a long and interesting conversation!
Between the lines you mention a crucial fact about dictatorships, communist or otherwise, i.e. the question how they justify they are in power and keep others away from power. Historically this justification was either derived from devine intervenion (divine right), or the monarch was himself seen as a divine figure (as (inofficially) can still be seen today, impersonated by the Japanese Emperor). In a democracy governments are elected by their people, so there is no question about their legitimacy. Furthermore there are procedures to deal with governments, unfit to rule. All this is not the case for the Chinese government. The only way for them to legitamise their being in power is to improve the living standarts of their citizens. A natural catastrophy as the recent eartquake immediatly brings this questions up. As you write buildings should have been able to withstand the earthquake, the government therefore has not kept its part of the bargain in this case and has therefore much more to fear than a democratically elected one.
With greetings from Germany,
Ernie
Sir, you state: “…the population knows that modern buildings should be able to withstand even severe quakes of this type.”
Very modern buildings indeed I should say. But most buildings in any region whether European or Chinese are not brand new; the vast majority were built before today’s building standards for earthquake regions were introduced. Had an earthquake of similar force happened in Europe the catastrophic results would have been pretty much the same.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7404253.stm
Please tell us more about this torture legislation – it sounds very interesting.
I think there are several factors to be considered, based both in the form of government (centralized, non-elected) and the size of the country.
Centralized non-elected administrations tend to spend most resources at the capital, or some other most prestigious city/location. I had the same impression when I traveled in the former GDR in the early 90ies. I guess that the ‘wisdom’ of Potemkin is known all over the world. Therefore I am not surprised that the buildings ‘out in the boonies’ were not the best and most modern, and did not stand up to the quake very well.
The other important aspect is the size of China, something that is hard to grasp for a European, even when traveling there. I cannot speak from experience in China here, but I live in the U.S. and there are similar issues to be recognized.
Just looking at Electric Power distribution: You need surge protectors for everything, computer, TV, because most distribution from the substation to the houses are above ground and therefore susceptible to lightening, causing outages or damaging equipment. A power outage is a normal occurrence that happens once a month or so. I lived in Germany before and can only remember ONE power outage at all. Does that mean that the German power system is better? Maybe, but more important all distances involved are significantly small and distance matters to electricity.
I think the same is true in China, independent of type or form of government, a huge country has problems that the typical European can’t even dream about.
All that being said, I am impressed with the fast response the Chinese government mounted, especially in contrast to the mess in Burma.
Just my 10 pennies worth (adjusted for inflation).
What I did not know is that Chinese officials prevented a major loss of life in the winter of 1975 after an evacuation was ordered:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/07/0720_040720_earthquake.html
Water levels dropped, strange animal behaviour all just before the quake.
Exactly the same phenomena was observed this time:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24646523/
What went wrong? Why no warning? Why was there no evacuation?
It’s a terrible shame that China is pumping out shoddy goods made in sweatshops by people who left the countryside to live in poor housing in cramped conditions. China used to produce the best porceline and intricate carvings but now it aims as low as it can go.
The country’s modernisation is not something I would be congratulating them on. How can we complain about global polution but also praise the Chinese for successfully clogging up the environment with polutants, unwanted gadgets/toys/clothes and discarded packaging?
Unfortunately, us in the West can’t seem to get enough of this rubbish. We’re all desperate to squeeze more plastic junk out of our leftover wages on a Saturday afternoon as we’ve got nothing better to do than douse our brains with some shopping adrenalin.
Maybe the representative from the Chinese government said you weren’t as worried as he was because he knows he’ll not get elected. And then what will happen to them all? That is something for them to worry about.
Hello Germany – and thank you Spiegel on line!
Ludwig. The point is that modern schools were collapsing – about 6 of them while other buildings weren’t. It is the corruption problem.
If the earthquake had been here the Houses of Parliament might have collapsed because the foundations are shallow but modern buildings wouldn’t – or not to the same extent.
I am no expert, but I have always thought that China can ride the two horses of economic expansion (and with it an increasingly wealthy middle class) and political repression (with the middle class having no say in the makeup of their government) only so long as the economic expansion continues. Money flowing into their pockets keeps the vocal middle class content.
However perhaps this earthquake is the shock that could unsettle that balance. With 4.8m homeless, many presumably reasonably affluent people who bought flats and houses that were recently built, perhaps this will trigger a political crisis… and perhaps that’s why China’s political leaders are making such a media show of their assistance.
Lord Soley,
I’m afraid your response to the comments here strike me as rather superficial. You seem to be suggesting that if the Communist Party were more ‘open’ people would know about, and demand, better building standards and all would be right with the world.
This to me seems rather like suggesting that if everyone in Africa had a broadband internet connection, with no nasty ‘Great Firewall of China’ type censorship then they would know all about the corruption in that great continent. And that they would then be able to overthrow the dictators, vote democratically for the people who would best be able to serve their interests, and famine and pestilence would be banished.
You don’t have to go to China to find buildings which fail to meet the current modern benchmarks for earthquake resilience. Buildings in Kobe in Japan had varying degrees of protection, although of course I’m not insinuating that this was to do with secrecy or corruption.
But I do think we need to stop seeing the whole world through the prism of our ‘developed world’ where technology and money is on tap in a way it simply isn’t in the developing world.
There are a lot of good comments to the chinese politic. But two things are missing: the confucianism and superstition the chinese still live with. The clashes on one hand und the horrible earthquake on the other hand are a display of lost divine support for the government. Thats why the chinese government is forced to be open (in memory to the lost of power of an other government due to a quake in the mid senveties). Last Thing I forgot to mention is the height of costs to pay for meat. Chinese people deduce prosperity from this height.
Regarding the corrupcy chinese people see more of this to happen in local authorities than in Beijing. And when schools and new buildings collapses faster than houses of cards – referred to very old buildings – then is corrupcy evident.
from berlin
Lord Soley, I’d posted my earlier comment before reading this morning’s Guardian…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/19/chinaearthquake.china2
When I read this through, the final sentence did strike me very hard, and made me realise that I was clearly way off the mark in my earlier comment. Clearly it is just not a case that a hard-pressed population have to suffer some minor corruption across the board – and that this will affect how well buildings are constructed ‘across the board’.
It is clearly the case that far more malign forces are at work and that ‘double-standards’ are being applied as to who gets priority.
It seems that satellites have measured changes in the ionosphere
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7435324.stm
just prior to earthquakes of magnitude 5 or more. As part of a holistic approach to earthquake prediction they might just have latched onto something.