Some Serious Questions for a Calamitous "Olympic Host" -- An honest
accounting of China's disaster / IHT

International Herald Tribune
An honest accounting of China's disaster

Monday, May 19, 2008

Chinese leaders are being far more open about the earthquake in Sichuan
Province than their predecessors were after a similar disaster in 1976,
and more open than the Burmese junta after a cyclone devastated much of
the country earlier this month.

But the presence in Sichuan of Chinese and foreign reporters reveals
only part of the story. A better test of China's new transparency will
be whether the government lets reporters investigate whether human
failings, official or otherwise, contributed to thousands of deaths.

The extent of the tragedy would have been hard to conceal. Video of the
quake was up on YouTube shortly after the first tremors Monday. And
Chinese society is far more open to outsiders and to its own people than
it was under the Maoist Gang of Four in 1976, when an earthquake
devastated the north. Prime Minister Wen Jiabao arrived at the affected
part of Sichuan within hours of the disaster, and news crews followed.

The central government is moving quickly to shape news coverage. A
Politburo member is reported to have told a meeting of propaganda
officials Tuesday that the media need to "uphold unity and encourage
stability." Live broadcasts from a television station in Chengdu, the
provincial capital, were stopped. The government and the Communist Party
want to regulate openness as though it were water from a tap.

Yet any Chinese citizen who reads about the disaster or sees images from
the scene must be seared by the devastation: children hoping for rescue
under the rubble of a school; parents' cries of anguish over the bodies
of their young; survivors scrambling for food or staring hopelessly at
the remains of their homes. Once the shock of devastation is past, many
Chinese people will crave not stability but an honest accounting.

People who live in societies with a free press often disparage its
excesses, for good reason. But in a disaster of national significance,
the news media would soon move from coverage of the immediate impact to
inquiries into its causes.

Why, for instance, did schools collapse? Were building codes enforced,
or were they inadequate to limit the damage? If construction was faulty,
who is to blame? Given the size and resources of China, was the response
to the disaster up to the task?

If the past is any guide, Chinese leaders may find a local scapegoat to
imprison or execute, but will be loath to permit a critical examination
of the causes. That might turn up evidence of the corruption that
pervades Chinese society, including the government and party.

The survivors deserve better than a cover-up, however, and the dead
wordlessly cry out for the truth.

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