CHINA’S EARTHQUAKE PREPAREDNESS
May 1, 2015
Yesterday, I was struck by the
disdain with which a BBC reporter in northeast Nepal described the Chinese response
to the earthquake, where today in Nepal the death toll has climbed past
6,000. The reporter complained that
foreign reporters had no access to the Chinese-controlled part of Tibet
adjoining Nepal. Accordingly, the
Chinese claim that only 25 lives had been lost on its territory “could not be
verified,” she said, and to make matters worse, international agencies could
not gain access to send in aid.
I checked the New China News
Agency web site. Their primary story is of a tent city that they have set up on
the Nepalese border, complete with electricity and plumbing, even internet
service, to hold at least 1,000 refugees.
They indeed report 25 lives lost and two border towns destroyed. Their second story features the crew
celebrating having cleared the two-lane trade route into Nepal of landslides,
showing the road itself intact and open to traffic. My inference:
for a country its size, in an area remote from Beijing, the Chinese have
done a remarkable job both of building infrastructure, and of having a national
army and other forces at hand to respond to natural disasters in a way that
puts my country’s responses, let alone the response both internally and
globally in Nepal, to shame. For all we
in my part of the world celebrate how materially and technologically advanced
we are in the West, the infrastructure and disaster response of the Chinese is
a testament to the power of a government to support public infrastructure, and
to be accessible in time of need. And
sometimes, failure to open up to outside aid and publicity may indicate that
people are too busy taking care of business to be disturbed. Love and peace, hal
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