Tragedy Shakes China

Yesterday afternoon whilst drafting a report about a Singaporean real estate developer and their connections to Wal-Mart, a Chinese colleague of mine ran into my corner of the office frantically asking people “you ganjue ma?” or “did you feel it?”. I thought maybe this was a Chinese inside joke so I returned to my Excel file. When everybody got up and went to the window to look at the newly erected CCTV Tower, which I thought was abnormal, I zoned in my Mandarin skills in an attempt to understand what all of the commotion was about. When the word “dizhen” meaning “earthquake” popped up more than once, I sprung up out of my seat and joined in on the hysteria (it seems that my colleagues were worried that the leaning CCTV tower would fall over from the quake – it didn’t.)

Being on a lower floor, I did not feel my office building sway. Apparently, most people working downtown did however. Looking out the window we could watch the mad exodus of office buildings as crowds filled the plazas and sidewalks. Although a few individuals were genuinely terrified, evacuations were mainly precautionary measures while most workers were just happy to get a little fresh air. My office did not evacuate, for example, but I did accompany some of my colleagues who smoke cigarettes in the stairwell – from movies I have learnt that the stairwells and elevator shafts are the strongest parts of a building. After an hour or so, Beijing was back to normal.

The news said that the epicenter was located in Sichuan Province near Chendgu, a city of 2 million, but could be felt as far as Beijing, Shanghai, Bangkok, Hong Kong, and even Taiwan. The initial reports coming out of Sichuan province did not look so bad – 5 children dead from a collapsed school was all I heard before I left work. I was a little surprised that an earthquake of 7.8 on the Richter scale occurring in one of the most densely populated regions in the world had not produced more gruesome results. Clearly (and unfortunately), I was wrong. Today I learned that Sichuan’s telecommunication systems had been crippled by the earthquake, cutting off all infromation, and that in fact, thousands had perished under rubble in counties around the city of Chengdu. As of now, over 10,000 are reported dead, whole counties have been left in ruins, and the numbers are feared to drastically rise in the coming days as China’s 50,000 PLA soldiers begin to reach areas that are still cut-off from the rescue efforts.

This is a tragedy of huge proportions and is reminiscent of the 1976 earthquake that struck the city of Tangshan just northeast of Beijing killing over a quarter of a million Chinese – a natural disaster largely covered-up my Mao and the Party. Current leaders however, learning from the mistakes of the past, have publicly rushed to ground zero and are genuinely trying to assist with the rescue efforts by uniting the support of the regional leaders and agencies. The world is watching the scaale of this disaster unfold on their tv screen and "our prayers are with the families of the victims."

Natural disasters are indeed natural. But it is clear that just like in New Orleans, infrastructure needs to be better suited to withstand such natural calamities. Also, better instruments and more efficient earthquake monitoring agencies should be in place. A few days before the quake, thousands of toads in Chengdu had resurfaced from sewer drains noticeably indicating something was awry. A local official was quoted saying it was because of changing weather patterns – he is probably wishing he had never said that.

Although it seems the government has been quite responsive as rescue efforts become a “top priority”, disgruntled Chinese bloggers are already attacking the local governments. One blogger complained about his tax dollars were being wasted funding a useless earthquake monitoring agency which failed to warn residents when early micro-seismic tremors began to occur – instead, he insisted that the country was better off investing in toad farms,