China offers fast quake relief
The death toll in the nation's rugged southwest climbed to more than 12,000 people, and state media cited an official who said that another 9,400 people might still be buried under debris.
Rainstorms hampered relief efforts, but workers pulled 58 survivors from the rubble of collapsed buildings in a number of cities north of the Sichuan capital of Chengdu. As the hours ticked by since the Monday afternoon quake, which registered a devastating 7.9 magnitude, hopes of finding more survivors ebbed amid the devastation.
State television offered nonstop coverage of the quake aftermath, much of it in live broadcasts, displaying often grisly images of relief workers pulling bodies from rubble but also underscoring the vigorous relief efforts of senior government leaders.
Most striking were images of Wen, looking emotional, as he offered encouragement to bedraggled survivors, urged rescuers to greater efforts and gave a deadline for laborers to clear roads of huge boulders and rockslides that the quake unleashed from mountainsides.
"I've never seen anything like this. It's a little bit more self-confidence by the central government," said Russell Leigh Moses, a political scientist based in the capital.
Wen rushed to Sichuan province immediately after the earthquake, and spent most of the next 24 hours coordinating relief efforts. Moses said that Wen went with the intention not so much to project a strong image of the central government as to "make sure people on the ground did their job."
"I think they were affected by Katrina," Moses said, referring to the bungled U.S. disaster relief efforts in New Orleans following a 2005 hurricane. "They don't want to be on the wrong side on this."
Another academic said the vigorous quake-relief efforts demonstrate that China's monolithic political system can act forcefully.
"A one-party system has its advantages when dealing with emergencies," said Wang Zhiqiang, a scholar at Tsinghua University's School of Public Policy and Management.
China's ruling Communist Party has a mandate that depends heavily on its ability to deliver economic growth, maintain social order and provide rapid help in emergencies. The party was shaken earlier this year by its slow response to massive snowstorms, severe unrest in Tibet and a troubled global Olympic torch relay before the Beijing Summer Games in August.
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