Interpreting the Sichuan earthquake
Updated: 2008-06-12 10:56
In a political culture where local officials tend to do a lot better once being directly supervised by top leaders, the high-profile visits go far beyond just soothing people's temperament. They have demonstrated the central government's determination to ensure things be done the right way.
Statistics showed that more than 130,000 service people and 40,000 local militiamen were deployed in relief work. Millions of tons of relief goods were transported into Sichuan and other affected provinces
Non-governmental relief funds distributors such as the Red Cross Society of China invited the National Audit Office to supervise all their fund distributions and donation activities. Progress in donation and volunteer work
The nation has probably never seen people being so enthusiastically involved in making donations and volunteering.
In almost every government organization, every company, every factory, even in the villages, people are giving money to help those they don't know. Over 44 billion yuan (6.3 billion US dollars) worth of funds and goods, mostly from domestic sources, was reported as of Wednesday. Volunteer numbers from around the country were too many to precisely count.
In a culture where people attach more importance to kinship, people are quite foreign to the concept of contributing through donation and volunteering. People are increasingly willing to put their trust in the government and recognized social organizations. International aid and national mourning days
By declining any international aid to help bail out the Tangshan earthquake tragedy, China tried to show an image of an unbeatable socialist giant that was able to fight any catastrophe on its own.
In contrast, the government quickly resorted to overseas aids this time, from military-use synthetic aperture radar images for disaster assessment to expertise on search and rescue, among others.
After a short period of understanding the quake impact, China immediately stated it welcomed all types of international aids. The decision to invite Japanese, Korean and Russian rescue teams to work at the front reflected the government's sincerity of putting people's lives over any possible worries that ineffective post-disaster management might sully the glorious image of the great nation.
So did the decision to fly national flags at half-staff from May 19 to 21 in a national mourning for those who lost their lives in the earthquake. In addition, all public entertainment activities as well as the Olympic torch relay were suspended.
This was the first time ever the national flag had been kept at half-staff to mourn for ordinary people. Before that, this was only a privilege for great state leaders. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Chinese embassies to foreign countries even went as far as organizing open condolence.
As American political scientist Francis Fukuyama wrote in his 1995 book "Trust" a nation's well-being and its competitiveness are decided by "the level of trust inherent in the society."
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