the earthquake irony

[aelward]

Has anyone else been thinking: the Chinese government has done so much more in responding to the earthquake than the US government did in responding to Katrina??

[kimtae]

Why not? Sichuan isn't a city full of Black folks. Now had that been Palm Springs...

[Tyger Durden]

I'm sure it has something to do with the nature of Bureaucracies. A Dictatorship (former or otherwise) can give immediate orders and get an immediate response. A Democracy like the USA has to get votes or authorization and go through the proper channels and then hope a separate government agency like FEMA (which is probably stagnant, decadent and corrupt to begin with) is competent enough to act in time.

I'm sure having Dubya in Office complicates the issue even further, given his slow response times to any catastrophic event (see, 9/11)

[ZhuBaJie]

apples and oranges. even with the bad response and turn-over time, at the last count, "only" about 2,000 people lost their lives. but even on the first day, 5,000 were reported dead for the earthquake in Sichuan.

if there was a 7.9 pt earthquake in the US where a lot of people lived, i'm sure the military would have been mobilised right away.

and it's not like there's been no criticism of the rescue efforts. you can find them in Chinese forums. what you are reading is Western media's comparison between China's response to the earthquake and Myanmar's response to the cyclone. if not for the horrible way the Myanmar government responded to the cyclone, Western media wouldn't have so much praise for the Chinese response. the praise isn't written to compliment the Chinese response, it was written for people to wonder what the political implications are - why the difference between China and Myanmar? did the recent Tibet protests have anything to do with the quick response? is the Chinese government realising they can't cover up disasters? etc etc.

[zhangfei]

Let’s give credit where credit is due. Even the NYtimes hinted that China manages to handle the earthquake disaster better than the United States handled Hurricane Katrina. China's quick response to the catastrophe -- 50,000 dead, 270,000 injured, 5 million homeless -- has won praises from many foreign reporters who were there. I think one of the reasons the Chinese government was able to respond so quickly and effectively is that the Tangshan earthquake of 1976, in which a quarter of million people were killed, has prepared their rescue teams well. This is not the first time the Chinese military was mobilized;the Chinese government sends the PLA to natural disaster area all the time. Just this past winter when snow blanketed the southern part of China, many troops were sent to rescue trapped passengers, to clear up highways, to restore electricity, to deliver food, etc.

Russia, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan have sent doctors, rescue teams and aids to Sichuan Province. And during this difficult time, China also sent a group of doctors and tons of aids to Burma.

Kanye West wasn't exactly wrong when he said George Bush doesn't care about black people. Many people knew about the problem of the city's levees long before Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, yet nothing was done. In the aftermath of the hurricane, when eighty percent of New Orleans was submerged under water, the federal government was nowhere to be found. Not only that, the Fed turned down Canadian rescue teams to help the Katrina victims, and refused most offers of aid from other countries.

[groinpull]

what's ironic is that not 2 weeks ago China was reviled because of the Tibetan protests. and now there's all this sympathy. amazing how the world turns on a dime.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/22/world/asia/22tibet.html?hp

[zhangfei]

http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idINIndia-33710820080522?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Within 20 minutes of the earthquake in southwestern China, the People's Liberation Army had activated its emergency response and started to mobilise.

Within hours, Premier Wen Jiabao was on a plane to the disaster zone in Sichuan province to direct the relief effort.

Within a day, roads leading to towns and villages toppled by the quake were starting to clog up with cars, trucks and buses carrying water, food, tents and volunteers eager to pitch in.

China's initial response to its worst natural disaster in a generation was fast, large and unprecedented.

It was in stark contrast to the Myanmar junta's slow, opaque efforts after this month's deadly cyclone and the U.S. government's much-criticised reaction to Hurricane Katrina.

"I think it is not an exaggeration to say that this is probably the most swift and effective response to a large-scale natural disaster in peacetime by any government in history," said Wenran Jiang, a political scientist at the University of Alberta.

Francis Markus, of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said the response was "exemplary".

The central leadership's ability to sense the scale of the disaster and launch major rescue work almost at once has won it unprecedented support and sympathy, analysts say.


http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a79GguQ3ufiU&refer=home

May 22 (Bloomberg) -- Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao returned to Sichuan province as rescuers, hampered by rain, struggled to shelter more than 12 million people displaced by last week's earthquake before disease spreads.

wow, the numbers are getting worse and worse. how do you take care of 12 million people?

[elan_vital]

My mother said this same stuff.

Right after I donated almost 100 dollars to my schools fund raiser.