What the earthquake tells us about China

Rescue workers respond in China.
(AP Photo/Wang Jiaowen, ColorChinaPhoto)

What happened
China's state-run media reported that the death toll from Monday's magnitude 7.9 earthquake had reached nearly 15,000, with 26,000 more buried under debris and another 14,000 still missing. China has mobilized some 20,000 soldiers in Sichuan province, with another 30,000 on the way, and Premier Wen Jiabao is heading up the relief effort. (CNN.com)

What the commentators said
China's leaders "have marshaled an impressive rescue," said the Toronto Star in an editorial, and the one edict from Jiabao, "Save the people," even extends to "welcoming the world's offer of help." That makes China's effort stand out even more from "Burma's criminally incompetent generals, who were more interested in their constitutional games than in helping their nation cope" with the deadly cyclone there. Still, "even China's speedy response cannot undo" such a tragedy "as the nation prepares to stage the Olympic Games this summer."

Given the "relentless coverage of Tibetan clashes and human rights abuses" leading up to the Olympics, said Barbara Demick in the Los Angeles Times (free registration), this tragedy actually gives China "an opportunity for a dramatic image makeover." The "new China" that is appearing in state TV coverage is "both compassionate and competent," and manages to strike the "delicate balance" between "eliciting sympathy and depicting China as a developed country."

The response has certainly been much better than in 1976, said The Miami Herald in an editorial, when "the Communist Party tried to hide the fact that a massive earthquake had struck in eastern China and killed more than 240,000 people." But amid all the other pain is the "double tragedy" for parents who lost their children, especially when a middle school collapsed. "Because of China's policy of limiting couples to just one child, many parents lost their one hope for their family's future."

- more -