2008年5月31日 星期六

China’s biggest health disaster is the air

中國向免費塑料購物袋說再見

中國"限塑令"生效,從今天起,商家不得免費提供塑料購物袋。

此外,從6月1日起,中國還禁止生產、銷售和使用厚度小于0.025毫米的塑料購物袋。

中國的限塑運動旨在通過改變人們的購物習慣,減少塑料垃圾以及由此造成的"白色污染",節約能源、改善環境。

今年,"綠色奧運"是北京奧運三大理念其中之一,環保的地位可見一斑。中國政府也在積極推進一系列環保政策以及環保項目。

中國塑料加工協會估計,實施限塑令之后,中國使用塑料袋的總量將減少三分之一。

該協會估計,中國每天使用30億個塑料袋,需要使用3700萬桶原油加工制造。最后,絕大多數都被扔進垃圾堆填充地球。

據法新社報道,大多數中國人都支持禁止商家提供免費塑料購物袋的做法。

報道說,網上市場調研公司CIIC-COMR對全國各地5200名消費者所作的調查發現,77.5%的人支持限塑。

目前全世界實行全面"限塑法"的國家還不多。

環保人士仍在緊密觀察中國該項法令的執行情況,特被是小城鎮、小商店能否嚴格執法。

綠色和平組織的一位活動人士說,塑料袋并不是中國最嚴重的環境污染問題。比如說,空氣質量,就是一個更加嚴重的問題。

Where Breathing Is Deadly

Nicholas D. Kristof

A fisherman at a fish pond near Badui, where fish are raised in suspect water.


Published: May 25, 2008

BADUI, China

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Nicholas D. Kristof

Kong Dongmei and Hong Xia in Badui village. Both girls are mentally-retarded, and the villagers blame pollution from a local factory.

China’s biggest health disaster isn’t the terrible Sichuan earthquake this month. It’s the air.

The quake killed at least 60,000 people, generating a response that has been heartwarming and inspiring, with even schoolchildren in China donating to the victims. Yet with little notice, somewhere between 300,000 and 400,000 Chinese die prematurely every year from the effects of outdoor air pollution, according to studies by Chinese and international agencies alike.

In short, roughly as many Chinese die every two months from the air as were killed in the earthquake. And the problem is becoming international: just as Californians can find Chinese-made shoes in their stores, they can now find Chinese-made haze in their skies.

This summer’s Beijing Olympics will showcase the most remarkable economic explosion in history, and also some of the world’s thickest pollution in both air and water. So I’ve returned to the Yellow River in western China’s Gansu Province to an isolated village that has haunted me since I saw it a decade ago.

Badui is known locally as the “village of dunces.” That’s because of the large number of mentally retarded people here — as well as the profusion of birth defects, skin rashes and physical deformities. Residents are sure that the problems result from a nearby fertilizer factory dumping effluent that taints their drinking water.

“Even if you’re afraid, you have to drink,” said Zhou Genger, the mother of a 15-year-old girl who is mentally retarded and has a hunchback. The girl, Kong Dongmei, mumbled unintelligibly, and Ms. Zhou said she had never been able to speak clearly.

Ms. Zhou pulled up the back of her daughter’s shirt, revealing a twisted, disfiguring mass of bones.

A 10-year-old neighbor girl named Hong Xia watched, her eyes filled with wonder at my camera. The neighbors say she, too, is retarded.

None of this is surprising: rural China is full of “cancer villages” caused by pollution from factories. Beijing’s air sometimes has a particulate concentration that is four times the level considered safe by the World Health Organization.

Scientists have tracked clouds of Chinese pollution as they drift over the Pacific and descend on America’s West Coast. The impact on American health is uncertain.

In fairness, China has been better than most other countries in curbing pollution, paying attention to the environment at a much earlier stage of development than the United States, Europe or Japan. Most impressive, in 2004, China embraced tighter fuel economy standards than the Bush administration was willing to accept at the time.

The city of Shanghai charges up to $7,000 for a license plate, thus reducing the number of new vehicles, and China has planted millions of trees and hugely expanded the use of natural gas to reduce emissions. If you look at what China’s leaders are doing, you wish that President Bush were half as green.

But then you peer into the Chinese haze — and despair. The economic boom is raising living standards hugely in many ways, but the toll of the resulting pollution can be brutal. The filth is prompting public protests, but the government has tightly curbed the civil society organizations that could help monitor pollution and keep it in check.

An environmental activist named Wu Lihong warned for years that Lake Tai, China’s third-largest freshwater lake, was endangered by chemical factories along its banks. Mr. Wu was proved right when the lake filled with toxins last summer — shortly after the authorities had sentenced him to three years in prison.

Here in Badui, the picture is as complex as China’s development itself. The government has taken action since my previous visit: the factory supposedly is no longer dumping pollutants, and the villages have been supplied with water that, in theory, is pure. The villagers don’t entirely believe this, but they acknowledge that their health problems have diminished.

Moreover, economic development has reached Badui. It is still poor, with a per-capita income of $100 a year, but there is now a rough dirt road to the village. On my last visit, there was only a footpath.

The road has increased economic opportunities. Farmers have dug ponds to raise fish that are trucked to the markets, but the fish are raised in water taken from the Yellow River just below the fertilizer factory. When I looked in one pond, the first thing I saw was a dead fish.

“We eat the fish ourselves,” said the village leader, Li Yuntang. “We worry about the chemicals, but we have to eat.” He said that as far as he knew, the fish had never been inspected for safety.

Now those fish from this dubious water are sold to unsuspecting residents in the city of Lanzhou. And the complexities and ambiguities about that progress offer a window into the shadings of China’s economic boom.

2008年5月29日 星期四

四川地震遇难学生家长

英国《金融时报》汤姆·米切尔(Tom Mitchell)北川报道
他们认为,建筑质量不合格是校舍倒塌主因
0530 2008
BBC 新聞 Asia Today 一影像令人難忘--一母子那了兒女的喪禮照片 不斷輕輕地撫摸相框玻璃下的亡兒臉頰

Burma introduces new constitution

entrench

Burma introduces new constitution

Burma has adopted a new constitution which the country's military regime says is approved by over 90 percent of the population.

The military pressed ahead with a constitutional referendum earlier this month, despite international calls to delay the vote due to Cyclone Nargis, which left over 130,000 Burmese dead or missing and caused widespread chaos.

The regime has said the new constitution will pave the way for elections in two years.

However, detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi says the charter will only entrench military rule. She will be barred from running for office under the new constitution, which reserves a quarter of parliamentary seats for the military.

倫敦大學將在阿德萊德創辦分校

倫敦大學將在阿德萊德創辦分校
2008年5月29日
倫敦大學學院(UCL)將成為第一個在澳大利亞開設校區的英國大學。

UCL已經与南澳大利亞州政府簽署協議。根据協議,UCL將在阿德萊德建立一個能源及礦業學院。學院將位于阿德萊德市中心維多利亞廣場的Torrens樓內。

學院建成后,可招募60名學生,學習為期兩年的能源及礦業碩士課程,同時學院還可開設教育管理課程。

南澳州政府計划撥款400万元用于修繕這座建筑,并將在學院開辦前七年內給學院提供支持。

2006年,美國的卡內基梅隆大學也在阿德萊德創辦了澳大利亞校區。

南澳州政府非常希望把阿德萊德建成一個學院城市,并鼓勵外國大學在南澳開辦分校。

2008年5月28日 星期三

River Threatens China Quake Survivors


River Threatens China Quake Survivors


Published: May 29, 2008

CHENGDU, China — Wedged between two fractured mountains, engineers, construction workers and soldiers were racing Wednesday to relieve pressure on a dammed river that threatens millions of people who live downstream, most of them survivors of the earthquake on May 12 that ranks as one of China’s deadliest natural disasters in 30 years.

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Local residents carried their belongings out of the debris of their collapsed houses in earthquake-devastated Beichuan in Sichuan Province. Authorities are evacuating the area amid new concerns about flooding. More Photos »

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Sichuan Earthquake Complete coverage of the aftermath of China’s earthquake.

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Chinese refugees leaving the town of Beichuan as Chinese soldiers prepared to enter the city in Beichuan County of China's Sichuan province on Wednesday. More Photos >

During the past two days, more than 600 people have been working around the clock to create a sluice above the village of Tianlin, according to Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency. The channel, being dug by hand and with excavating machines that were airlifted to the site, would drain water from a fast-rising reservoir created by an avalanche of rock and mud that spilled into the river, the Bai He, during earthquake.

In recent days, at least 160,000 people have been evacuated, although hundreds of thousands of others are still living downstream, most of them in temporary camps that are proving a formidable challenge to the government as it struggles to provide food, water and shelter for more than 15 million displaced people.

Government officials on Wednesday raised the quake’s death toll by 1,000, to 68,100; another 21,000 people are still missing.

Engineers have said they need at least a week to dig a drainage canal to reduce pressure on the dam, which is blocking the Bai He two miles upstream from the devastated town of Beichuan.

During an earthquake relief cabinet meeting in Beijing, Hui Liangyu, a vice premier, expressed urgency, saying “any negligence will cause new disasters to people who have already suffered the quake,” Xinhua said on Wednesday. During the same meeting on Tuesday, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao told ministers that alleviating the risk of flooding from 34 so-called quake lakes was “the most pressing task” for the government. Officials also announced that $29 million in emergency funds would be allocated to the effort.

One water resources official told Agence France-Presse that the evacuations were moving too slowly. “Sometimes local governments think that evacuation is too much trouble, and they’re betting it won’t really be necessary, because they’re not sure how big the risk might be,” he said.

Cai Qihua, a local water management official, told The China Daily that the water was quickly approaching the top of the rubble wall, rising nearly 7 feet a day. He said another 75 feet remained until the water reached the top of the dam, although it is not clear whether that would cause the barrier to crumble.

Japanese officials said they were considering a Chinese request to provide tents and blankets to the homeless. During a press conference in Tokyo, Nobutaka Machimura, Japan’s chief cabinet secretary, said Wednesday it was unclear whether Beijing would allow the Japanese military aircraft to deliver aid. If so, it would mark the first time that the military would touch down on Chinese soil since Japan’s brutal World War II occupation.

During the cabinet meeting in Beijing on Tuesday, the ministers said the government’s relief efforts had reached a “new stage,” one that should focus on burying the dead, feeding the living and preventing an outbreak of disease through a massive inoculation campaign. They also said work should begin on reconstruction, including the restoration of crippled industries.

The ministers, however, suggested that some badly damaged towns might never be rebuilt. They said residents would be relocated, although it provided no further details. According to Xinhua, the members of the state council urged that “social order should be maintained in the quake zones.”

In several towns, parents continued to agitate for a speedy government investigation into why so many schools collapsed during the earthquake, killing thousands of students and teachers. In Shifang, more than 300 parents whose children died at the Jiandi Middle School protested at the gates of the local government, according to Boxun News.

In Dujiangyan, a group of 500 parents gathered at a tent temporarily housing the city’s education bureau and demanded that provincial officials investigate why the Xin Jian school collapsed, killing at least 300 children. They also asked that those responsible be punished and that bereaved parents receive compensation.

According to the father of a 9-year-old girl who died at the school, about a dozen parents were allowed to talk to officials, although they left feeling dissatisfied. “They only offered some hollow ‘official talk,’” said the man, who would only give his surname, Qin.

Encouraged by another group of parents who protested in Mianzhu on Sunday, Mr. Qin said the parents would stage their own “mourning” rally on June 1, which is Children’s Day in China, a national holiday.

Parents’ Grief Turns to Rage at Chinese Officials

Parents’ Grief Turns to Rage at Chinese Officials


Published: May 28, 2008

DUJIANGYAN, China — Bereaved parents whose children were crushed to death in their classrooms during the earthquake in Sichuan Province have turned mourning ceremonies into protests in recent days, forcing officials to address growing political repercussions over shoddy construction of public schools.

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Shiho Fukada for The New York Times

Jiang Guohua, the Communist Party boss of Mianzhu, knelt Sunday to ask parents of earthquake victims to abandon their protest. More Photos »

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Times reporters are answering readers’ questions about the earthquake, its aftermath and the Chinese government’s response.

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A list of agencies providing relief in the earthquake zone.

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Sichuan Earthquake

Sichuan Earthquake Complete coverage of the aftermath of China’s earthquake.

Parents of the estimated 10,000 children who lost their lives in the quake have grown so enraged about collapsed schools that they have overcome their usual caution about confronting Communist Party officials. Many say they are especially upset that some schools for poor students crumbled into rubble even though government offices and more elite schools not far away survived the May 12 quake largely intact.

On Tuesday, an informal gathering of parents at Juyuan Middle School in Dujiangyan to commemorate their children gave way to unbridled fury. One of the fathers in attendance, a quarry worker named Liu Lifu, grabbed the microphone and began calling for justice. His 15-year-old daughter, Liu Li, was killed along with her entire class during a biology lesson.

“We demand that the government severely punish the killers who caused the collapse of the school building,” he shouted. “Please, everyone sign the petition so we can find out the truth.”

The crowd grew more agitated. Some parents said local officials had known for years that the school was unsafe but refused to take action. Others recalled that two hours passed before rescue workers showed up; even then, they stopped working at 10 p.m. on the night of the earthquake and did not resume the search until 9 a.m. the next day.

Although there is no official casualty count, only 13 of the school’s 900 students came out alive, parents said. “The people responsible for this should be brought here and have a bullet put in their head,” said Luo Guanmin, a farmer who was cradling a photo of his 16-year-old daughter, Luo Dan.

Sharp confrontations between protesters and officials began over the weekend in several towns in northern Sichuan. Hundreds of parents whose children died at the Fuxin No. 2 Primary School in the city of Mianzhu staged an impromptu rally on Saturday. They surrounded an official who tried to assure them that their complaints were being taken seriously, screaming and yelling in her face until she fainted.

The next day, the Communist Party’s top official in Mianzhu came out to talk with the parents and to try to stop them from marching to Chengdu, the provincial capital, where they sought to prevail on higher-level authorities to investigate. The local party boss, Jiang Guohua, dropped to his knees and pleaded with them to abandon the protest, but the parents shouted in his face and continued their march.

Later, as the crowd surged into the hundreds, some parents clashed with the police, leaving several bleeding and trembling with emotion.

The protests threaten to undermine the government’s attempts to promote its response to the quake as effective and to highlight heroic rescue efforts by the People’s Liberation Army, which has dispatched 150,000 soldiers to the region. Censors have blocked detailed reporting of the schools controversy by the state-run media, but a photo of Mr. Jiang kneeling before protesters has become a sensation on some Web forums, bringing national attention to the incident.

One of China’s boldest magazines, the business journal Caijing, used its main commentary article in its latest issue to call on the government to step up investigations of faulty school construction. Xinhua, the official news agency, also issued a commentary saying a speedy official response was warranted.

The authorities in Beijing appear to recognize the delicacy of the issue. On Monday, a spokesman for the Education Ministry, Wang Xuming, promised a reassessment of school buildings in quake zones, adding that those responsible for cutting corners on school construction would be “severely punished.”

Local officials across Sichuan have also bowed to the pressure.

In Beichuan, officials announced an investigation into the collapse of a middle school there that killed 1,300 children.

Reached by telephone on Tuesday, two provincial officials in Chengdu vowed a vigorous response, although they suggested that full-scale investigations should take a back seat to the needs of survivors.

“We are not officially investigating the quality problems in school buildings, but we definitely will, after we finish the temporary lodging for refugees,” said Tian Liya, the party secretary of the Sichuan Construction Bureau’s emergency department.

Gauging from the outbursts of recent days, any delay will only embolden infuriated parents. In their confrontation with Communist Party officials on Saturday, the parents encircled the vice secretary of the Mianzhu city government and called her a liar for her report on the destruction of the Fuxin school that failed to mention that 127 students had been killed.

“Why can’t you do the right things for us?” they shouted. “Why do you cheat us?” For the next 20 minutes they screamed at her until she passed out and had to be carried away by an aide.

The next day, the parents directed their ire at Mr. Jiang. When his answers proved unsatisfying, they began their march to Chengdu. Mr. Jiang dropped to the ground several times and begged them to stop. “Please believe the Mianzhu Party committee can resolve the issue,” he said. They kept walking.

Three hours later, the police tried to intervene. During the ensuing struggle, the broken glass from the framed pictures of dead children left several parents bleeding. After a tense standoff, the marchers agreed to board government buses to Deyang, the county seat. There, they met with the vice mayor, who promised he would start an investigation the following day.

“I hope you can be free from this mood of sadness,” Zhang Jinming, the vice mayor, said before sending them away. “The government will make a research team and give you a satisfying result.”

The parents who lost their children at Juyuan Middle School say they have yet to hear from Dujiangyan officials. A few said they had been approached by teachers and told that they would be well compensated for their loss — about $4,500 per child, several times the average annual income in this area — if they would stop their increasingly vociferous public campaign.

“We don’t want their money,” said Mr. Luo, the farmer, as others nodded in agreement. “We just want this corruption to end.” Many parents said they felt insulted that no one from the school or the government had come to offer condolences.

The only official presence at Tuesday’s gathering in Dujiangyan was a pair of tanker trucks full of disinfectant, which arrived at the start of the ceremony. As the parents began lighting candles and incense, a worker directed his hose at the mountain of rubble. The strong smell of bleach drifted over the crowd. Then, perhaps sensing the potential for confrontation, the workers drove away.

The parents were told to group themselves according to their children’s classes, and as they lined up, they numbly exchanged stories of loss. “When they pulled my boy out, he kept begging for water but then he died,” said Wang Chaoping, holding a passport-sized photo of his 16-year-old son, Wang Tinghai. “He wasn’t the best student, but he loved sports.”

Some parents came hugging framed photographs and dog-eared achievement awards, placing them on the spot where their children died under heaps of broken concrete. The men set off fireworks to chase away evil spirits as wads of paper money smoldered amid the rubble.

Then a dirge began playing over the loudspeaker, and all at once the women doubled over in agony, a chorus of 100 mothers wailing over the loss of sons and daughters who, because of China’s population control policy, were their only children. The husbands wept in silence, paralyzed by the storm of emotion.

“We worked so hard to raise you and then you left us so suddenly,” a woman screamed, pounding the ruins of the Juyuan Middle School with her fists. “How could you leave us to grow old alone?”

The parents whose children attended Juyuan were mostly farmers and factory workers, who have now lost their homes and jobs, as well as their children.

Many, like Li Ping, 43, said they had lived frugally in order to pay required fees for meals and a bed in the dormitory.

“I put all my hope in my one child,” said Mr. Li, who has been unable to work because of chronic liver disease. “They were supposed to support us in old age.” He started to well up but then stopped himself. “We’re not asking the government for money,” he said. “We just want them to tell us why they died.”

Huang Yuanxi contributed research for this article from Chengdu, China. Shiho Fukada contributed reporting from Mianzhu, China.

2008年5月25日 星期日

Aftershock in China Topples Many Buildings

Aftershock in China Topples Many Buildings

Frederic J. Brown/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Earthquake survivors searched through rubble in Hanwang, in southwest Sichuan Province, on Sunday.


Published: May 26, 2008

BEIJING — A powerful aftershock hit a poor, mountainous region of Sichuan Province on Sunday afternoon, toppling thousands of buildings and injuring hundreds.

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Times reporters are answering readers’ questions about the earthquake, its aftermath and the Chinese government’s response.

How to Help

A list of agencies providing relief in the earthquake zone.

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Sichuan Earthquake

Sichuan Earthquake Complete coverage of the aftermath of China’s earthquake.

The tremor in Qingchuan County, which the United States Geological Survey measured as having a magnitude of 6.0, hit at 4:21 p.m. By evening, the state news agency, Xinhua, had reported one death and 260 injuries. A government spokesman in Qingchuan said emergency medical teams were responding to calls for help from six townships, Xinhua reported, and the number of casualties was not yet known.

An official in Guangyuan County, east of Qingchuan, told Xinhua that the aftershock had caused many homes to collapse. The tremor struck in a rough and remote area of northern Sichuan, on the border of Gansu Province, and it damaged roads, toppled old buildings and caused several fires in one town, Xinhua reported.

Also on Sunday, state television reported that rescuers had saved an 80-year-old man who had lived for nearly two weeks in a collapsed building.

The rescue, made on Friday, was trumpeted in the state-run media, but Chinese officials are clearly shifting the relief effort toward finding shelter for millions of refugees. The government has said the earthquake left five million people homeless, although one official in Sichuan Province said the number could be as high as 11 million, according to a report on Sunday from Xinhua.

The death toll rose on Sunday, past 62,000, and while rescue efforts are continuing, the chances of finding more trapped survivors are dwindling with each passing day.

Meanwhile, a senior official in Beijing warned that 69 dams in the earthquake-stricken region could present “dangerous situations” and risked some danger of collapsing. To reduce risks, numerous reservoirs in the region have been drained to ease pressure on the dams.

On Saturday, in his second visit to the devastated areas since the earthquake struck on May 12, China’s prime minister, Wen Jiabao, said the government was on alert for secondary disasters, particularly floods that could be caused by the breaching of lakes formed when rivers were blocked by landslides.

On Sunday, state media reported that 1,600 soldiers were marched to one of the “quake lakes,” in Tangjiashan, with orders to blast away the landslide behind which water had been rising for days. Helicopters have not been able to land troops in the region because of bad weather.

The water in the Tangjiashan quake lake, two miles upstream from devastated Beichuan County, rose by about six feet on Saturday, and if its barrier were breached, a flash flood could threaten the lives of 70,000 people downstream, state media reported.

Relief efforts continued in Sichuan Province on a day that jangled nerves in the provincial capital of Chengdu as the aftershock sent thousands of residents running into the streets.

At an impromptu news conference at a tent camp in Yingxiu, near the earthquake’s epicenter, on Saturday, Mr. Wen said that the government’s efforts were shifting from rescuing people buried under fallen buildings to caring for the homeless.

Speaking through a megaphone, he said that tents had been transported to disaster areas from other provinces, but that there was a severe shortage, according to official news reports.

In the city of Dujiangyan, thousands of people are now sleeping in blue disaster tents set up in rows on the open-air track of a college campus. A local restaurant chain serves hot meals every day. Doctors with the Chinese Red Cross prepare stews of medicinal herbs for the ailing. Last week, volunteers from a hair salon gave refugees free haircuts.

Zhou Dezheng, 58, a retired architect, has been staying in a government-issued tent with his family and two others. “We are better off than refugees in most countries,” he said in an interview last week. “We have tents. We have food.”

Many buildings in Dujiangyan, like Mr. Zhou’s home, cracked but did not collapse. Virtually every apartment building in the city of 100,000 is now empty. Sitting beside his tent in the yellow glow of a flashlight last week, Mr. Zhou said, “I am afraid to go home.”

The residents of Dujiangyan, an hour’s drive from Chengdu, the headquarters of the relief effort, are relatively fortunate. They have food, water and shelter.

But in hundreds of villages in the surrounding countryside, many families have not received sturdy steel-framed tents. Instead, they must make do with makeshift shelters made from bamboo poles and tarpaulins. Late last week, several farmers who hiked out of the mountainous Hongkou Township, west of Dujiangyan, said there was not enough food and drinking water there.

2008年5月24日 星期六

Chinese Are Left to Ask Why Schools Crumbled in Quake

Chinese Are Left to Ask Why Schools Crumbled in Quake

Du Bin for The New York Times

UNEQUAL DAMAGE. Xinjian Primary School in Dujiangyan was destroyed, while a kindergarten, at left, and a hotel were barely damaged.

By JIM YARDLEY
Published: May 25, 2008

This story was reported by Jim Yardley, Jake Hooker and Andrew C. Revkin, and was written by Mr. Yardley.

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Comment Earthquake Q&A

Times reporters are answering readers’ questions about the earthquake, its aftermath and the Chinese government’s response.

How to Help

A list of agencies providing relief in the earthquake zone.

Times Topics

Sichuan Earthquake

Sichuan Earthquake Complete coverage of the aftermath of China’s earthquake.

China Photo Press

Nine fourth graders survived in a class of 48, part of which was photographed in June.

Liu Bowen for The New York Times

‘There Is Death Everywhere’ Soldiers uncovered a student’s body at Beichuan Middle School, one of scores of schools that collapsed. Beichuan was one of the towns hardest hit on May 12.

DUJIANGYAN, China — The earthquake’s destruction of Xinjian Primary School was swift and complete. Hundreds of children were crushed as the floors collapsed in a deluge of falling bricks and concrete. Days later, as curiosity seekers came with video cameras and as parents came to grieve, the four-story school was no more than rubble.

In contrast, none of the nearby buildings were badly damaged. A separate kindergarten less than 20 feet away survived with barely a crack. An adjacent 10-story hotel stood largely undisturbed. And another local primary school, Beijie, catering to children of the elite, was in such good condition that local officials were using it as a refugee center.

“This is not a natural disaster,” said Ren Yongchang, whose 9-year-old son died inside the destroyed school. His hands were covered in plaster dust as he stood beside the rubble, shouting and weeping as he grabbed the exposed steel rebar of a broken concrete column. “This is not good steel. It doesn’t meet standards. They stole our children.”

There is no official figure on how many children died at Xinjian Primary School, nor on how many died at scores of other schools that collapsed in the powerful May 12 earthquake in Sichuan Province. But the number of student deaths seems likely to exceed 10,000, and possibly go much higher, a staggering figure that has become a simmering controversy in China as grieving parents say their children might have lived had the schools been better built.

The Chinese government has enjoyed broad public support for its handling of the earthquake, and in Sichuan on Saturday, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon of the United Nations praised the government’s response.

But as parents at different schools begin to speak out, the question of whether official negligence, and possibly corruption, contributed to the student deaths could turn public opinion. The government has launched an investigation, but censors, wary of the public mood, are trying to suppress the issue in state-run media and online.

An examination of the collapse of Xinjian Primary School offers a disturbing picture of a calamity that might have been avoided. Many parents say they were told the school was unsafe. Xinjian was poorly built when it opened its doors in 1992, they say, and never got its share of government funds for reconstruction because of its low ranking in the local education bureaucracy and the low social status of its students.

A decade ago, a detached wing of the school was torn down and rebuilt because of safety concerns. But the main building remained unimproved. Engineers and earthquake experts who examined photographs of its wreckage concluded that the structure had many failings and one critical flaw: inadequate iron reinforcing rods running up the school’s vertical columns. One expert described the unstable concrete floor panels as “time bombs.”

Xinjian also was ill-equipped for a crisis. An ambulance and other rescue vehicles that responded after the earthquake could not fit through the entrance into the school’s courtyard. A bulldozer finally dug up beneath the front gate to create enough overhead clearance. Parents say they believe several hundred of the school’s 660 pupils died.

“It is impossible to describe,” said a nurse standing on the rubble of the Xinjian site. “There is death everywhere.”

Schools are vulnerable to earthquakes, especially in developing nations where less attention is paid to building codes. The quake in Sichuan Province has already claimed 60,560 lives, and some of the flattened schools, especially those buried under landslides, could not have stood under any circumstances. The government has not provided a public list of those schools, but one early estimate concluded that more than 7,000 “schoolrooms” were destroyed.

China has national building codes intended to ensure that major structures withstand earthquakes. The government also has made upgrading or replacing substandard schools a priority as part of a broader effort to improve and expand education. Yet codes are spottily enforced. In March 2006, Sichuan Province issued a notice that local governments must inspect schools because too many remained unsafe, according to one official Web site.

Nothing is more central to the social contract in China than schools. Parents sacrifice and “eat bitter” so their children can get educations that lead to better lives. In turn, children care for their parents in old age. As in Manhattan, affluent Chinese fight to gain entrance to top schools from kindergarten onward.

But the families who sent their children to Xinjian are neither wealthy nor well connected. They are among the hundreds of millions still struggling to benefit from China’s economic rise. Many lost their jobs when a local cement plant shut down. Some sought work in more prosperous areas, leaving their children behind to attend school.

Angry parents at several destroyed schools are beginning to stage small demonstrations. On Wednesday, more than 200 Xinjian parents demonstrated at the temporary tents used by Dujiangyan’s education bureau, demanding an investigation and accusing officials of corruption and negligence.

One of the parents, Li Wei, said his son was one of 54 students who died in a class of 60 fifth graders. He said education officials told the demonstrating parents that the bureau had reported safety concerns to municipal leaders in the past. But their complaints were ignored.

“We want to bring justice for our children,” one father said the day before the protest. “We want the local officials to pay the price.”

Poor School, Long Neglected

The earthquake struck on May 12 at 2:28 in the afternoon as 20 fifth graders were rehearsing a dance on the basketball court in front of the school. Fourth graders were outside for gym class. When nearby shopkeepers rushed over, the children were standing on the court amid a cloud of dust. “They weren’t crying,” said Chen Chunmei, 35, the manager of a shopping strip beside the school. “They were in shock.”

The main building was decimated. Parents, neighbors and nearby college students arrived to find awful carnage. Ma Qiang, a decommissioned soldier living across the street, described a sickening scene.

“We were standing on the bodies of dead children, pulling out other children,” he recalled days later. He stood in the rubble and held his hand level with his head. “The concrete was this high. On the top was a boy, and two girls below him, and another boy under them, who was dead. It took four hours to dig them out.”

For hours, this ad hoc rescue team formed a line and passed along bricks or chunks of concrete in an attempt to clear debris. Bodies of children were piled on the sidewalk across the street. By late evening, paramilitary officers arrived and ordered the parents and others to withdraw outside the school gate. Many parents considered this a tardy response that was a stinging reminder of Xinjian’s low standing.

“A lot of our students came from the mountains,” said Deng Huiying, the former long-time principal. “Their parents were migrant workers.”

Xinjian is in the heart of the city of Dujiangyan. The lack of damage to the yellow-tiled kindergarten next door or to the Beijie Primary School a five-minute walk away has served as a reminder that proximity is not the same as equality.

Beijie is the city’s elite primary school, designated as a provincial-level “key” school, boasting the best facilities and the finest teachers. The kindergarten, meanwhile, was built and controlled directly by the city government of Dujiangyan. For years, Xinjian was controlled by a smaller, local township government, which had far less money and did little to improve the school.

In recent years, China’s central government has gradually abolished primary school tuition and other fees to ease burdens on farmers and migrants. Beijing has also increased its payments to local governments for education, but the main burden remains on local authorities, and many find themselves strapped for cash or siphon it off.

When Xinjian was built in 1992, many parents worked for the Dongfeng Cement Factory. Company bosses donated 40 tons of cement. But that was not enough. “Everybody knew they didn’t have enough cement,” said Dai Chuanbin, an older man familiar with the project. “So they used a lot of sand.”

Parents say the township government cut costs further by hiring farmers to do the work instead of trained construction crews. One former school official recalled that workers poured the foundation during such heavy rains that it collapsed. Another foundation had to be poured.

The school opened in 1993 and would quickly be overrun with students. The detached annex was rebuilt in 1998 after inspectors deemed it substandard. Ms. Deng, the former principal, recalled that nearby construction work in May 2006 caused the flooring in the main school building to shake violently. But she said she never had reason to believe the building was structurally unsound and never filed any written complaints with higher officials.

“If I’d thought the building was unsafe, there’s no way I would have let the kids stay there,” she said. When she saw the collapsed building, she fell on the ground, sobbing.

Several parents tell a different story. They say Ms. Deng and other school officials told them that the building was aging and unsafe, though they could provide no written proof. One father was told that Xinjian would soon be closed. Another, Zhu Junsheng, 44, claimed that Ms. Deng filed a report with Dujiangyan’s education bureau complaining about the building.

“The education bureau said there was no money,” said Mr. Zhu, sitting in front of a blue tent in a refugee camp a block from the school. “They didn’t care.

“I just want to say: The government didn’t do its job.”

Nearly two weeks after the earthquake, Mr. Ma, the decommissioned soldier, keeps returning to the rubble of Xinjian. He smokes cigarette after cigarette and has not changed out of the Che Guevara T-shirt and blue jeans he wore on that frantic afternoon.

“That’s where government officials send their children to nursery school,” he said, pointing to the undamaged, yellow-tiled kindergarten.

Mr. Ma saved several children the day of the disaster but cannot shake the memory of one girl. Her leg had been pinned beneath a heavy concrete slab. Two small cranes had failed to free her. Her body temperature was quickly dropping. So Mr. Ma told her father, “She can keep her leg or her life.”

The father was led away. Mr. Ma used a serrated knife he kept in his jeans. He said the job took three cuts across the girl’s shin. “She will hate me when she is older if she has trouble with love,” he said with a grim smile.

He does not know the girl’s name. “I have dreams every night,” he said. “She was very pretty. Very strong.”

Deadly Engineering Shortcuts

Techniques for fortifying buildings to withstand earthquakes have been clearly understood for decades. Use high-quality concrete. Embed extra iron rods. Tie them tightly into bundles with strong wire. Ensure that components of floors, walls and columns are firmly attached. Pay special attention to columns, which are the key to having a building sway rather than topple.

Engineers are already trying to assess how much of the destruction on May 12 should be attributed to faulty construction during China’s long and often helter-skelter building boom. The earthquake was so powerful, measuring at least 7.9 in magnitude, that a certain amount of damage could not be prevented. But engineering experts say Xinjian and some other schools in Sichuan were especially vulnerable.

Six structural engineers and earthquake experts asked by The New York Times to analyze an online photographic slide show of the wreckage at Xinjian concluded, independently, that inadequate steel reinforcement, or rebar, was used in the concrete columns supporting the school. They also found that the school’s precast, hollow concrete slab floors and walls did not appear to be securely joined together.

The widespread use of cheap, hollow slab floors is significant because numerous buildings with the same flooring collapsed during another Chinese earthquake in 1976, which devastated the city of Tangshan and killed at least 240,000. (A few buildings with the same flooring also fared poorly during the 1994 earthquake in Northern California.)

“If the hollow core slabs are not adequately tied to the lateral frames, which seems to be the case in the photos, the structures are likely very flexible and would undergo large deformations under severe ground motions,” said Mary Beth Hueste, an associate professor of engineering at Texas A&M University, in an e-mail message.

When such components are not securely joined, they are “extremely dangerous, like time bombs,” said Xiao Yan, an expert in earthquake-resistant designs.

The most pronounced failing at Xinjian seemed to be inadequate steel reinforcement of the concrete columns supporting the school, experts said. There were too few rebar reinforcing rods and too little of the thin binding wire that holds the rebar together. And, critically, the steel bindings attaching the concrete flooring slabs were inadequate.

Xiaonian Duan, an engineer specializing in earthquake resilience for Arup, a multinational design consulting company whose head office is in London, said that concrete flooring panels fall apart during an earthquake if not strongly attached, “like we see Legos collapse.”

The Chinese government has known that many schools, especially in rural areas, are unsafe. Since 2001, the State Council, China’s cabinet, has budgeted roughly $1.5 billion for a nationwide program to repair dangerous schools in rural areas. In 2006, Sichuan Province’s government issued an urgent notice calling for localities to stop using substandard primary and middle schools.

“Unsafe buildings are the major hidden danger of school safety at present, and in recent years, accidents with death tolls and injuries were caused by collapsed schools,” the provincial notice warned.

Dr. Xiao toured the disaster zone after this month’s earthquake and found that many of the problems at Xinjian were common elsewhere. He said one reason for the widespread damage was that buildings in the region were not required to meet China’s most stringent standards for seismic protection. He also noted that China rates overall building design codes from 1 to 4. Buildings rated 1 are considered “important” and must meet stricter design requirements. But the system rates schools only as a 3, which means no additional design protections are needed.

In the aftermath of the quake, a handful of bricklayers and builders have visited Xinjian Primary School out of professional curiosity. A builder from nearby Meishan City recognized the faulty columns and flooring problems. Then he picked up a chunk of concrete from the rubble and rubbed it in his hands.

“The ratio of sand and concrete isn’t right,” he said. “It fell down because of cheap materials.”

In Search of Justice

The parents of Xinjian Primary School posted an online petition last Wednesday. They demanded justice for their children. Local police officials have promised an investigation, but the parents are not satisfied. They intend to protest again.

School represents hope in China. The parents do not express it exactly like that, but they saw education as their children’s only chance. The cement factory that employed many parents — and provided cement for the school — went bankrupt in 2002. They now collect small welfare payments and hold down odd jobs to support their families.

Liao Minhui had aspirations for his daughter. He knew that Xinjian was considered inferior and that a better school might help her find a better life. So he tried to wheedle her into Beijie, the elite school. He said he offered thousands of yuan to gain her admission, to no avail. She died in the Xinjian rubble.

“I tried very hard,” Mr. Liao said. “I tried to get help from every well-connected friend I have. Everything there is the best. The teachers are the best. The facilities are the best.”

Jiang Xuezheng, 41, is a small, wiry man whose simple manner betrays his country upbringing in a village about 200 miles away. He has sold fruit in Dujiangyan for nearly a decade to support his family back in the village. But to do this, he lived apart from his son for eight years.

So last year, Mr. Jiang also paid to try to win his child admission to a city school. He chose Xinjian. To him, a peasant, a city school like Xinjian represented a step up. He paid a $1,400 fee to make the switch. His 9-year-old boy was admitted in September.

“My parents are still in the countryside, but I wanted my son to live with me,” said Mr. Jiang, bowing his head and weeping. “I waited for eight years. Finally, I was together with my son.

“And then tragedy happens.”

Jim Yardley and Jake Hooker reported from Dujiangyan, and Andrew C. Revkin from New York. Zhang Jing and Huang Yuanxi contributed research.

China’s Rush to Dispose of Dead Compounds Agony

China’s Rush to Dispose of Dead Compounds Agony

Shiho Fukada for The New York Times

Earthquake survivors searching for missing relatives looked at posters on Thursday in Mianyang, China.


Published: May 24, 2008

BEICHUAN, China — The 30 bodies in plastic bags lay strewn outside the tea factory at the foot of the forensic scientist, flies buzzing all around. From some he had collected molars, and from others cartilage. He had worked quickly, 20 minutes per body.

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Sichuan Earthquake

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Beichuan sanitation workers taking tissues samples for DNA tests before disinfecting bodies.

Soldiers and rescue workers were rushing to unload the earthquake victims into a mass burial pit, where the dirt was still loose and sprinkled with white lime powder.

“The bodies are often in bad condition and decaying; yesterday it rained, and today it’s very sunny,” the scientist, Liang Weibo, said through a surgical mask. “This makes identifying them difficult.”

They are unknown people being quickly cremated or buried in unmarked graves, and there are thousands or tens of thousands of them across quake-ravaged Sichuan Province. It may be months or years before family members discover their fate, if they ever do. They are very likely to be among the nearly 25,000 people the Chinese government classifies as missing in the aftermath of the May 12 earthquake.

President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao have urged rescue workers to save lives “at any cost.” But the scale of the disaster has forced the government to dispose of the dead with little ceremony, closing the door on any opportunity family members have of identifying their kin by sight and upsetting the traditional Chinese reverence for the deceased.

Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general of the United Nations, flew to Chengdu, the provincial capital, on Saturday to take a look at the relief efforts, The Associated Press reported.

More than 60,000 people have died in China’s greatest natural disaster in three decades, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao told The A.P. Officials ordered any bodies found to be burned or buried in mass graves starting May 16, citing the corpses’ state of decay and the threat of epidemics, even though many international health experts say dead bodies do not spread disease.

For many of the dead, no trace remains except photos and names printed on thousands of posters put up by searching family members, like the forests of fliers that sprang up in New York after the Sept. 11 terrorist attack.

In this mountainous corner of China, where customs run deep, Chinese of the majority Han ethnicity insist on cremating family members to ensure a smooth passage to the afterlife. Those from the Qiang ethnic group, who are numerous here, want to bury their dead.

But processing the dead on an assembly line renders those choices moot. “We can’t even see the bodies, much less perform the funeral rites,” said Bian Kaizhen, 63, a patient at Shifang People’s Hospital who is from the village of Sanjiang, where virtually every building collapsed. “There’s a Chinese saying: ‘If he’s alive, I want to see him; if he’s missing, I want to see his body.’ ”

As of Tuesday, 80 percent of corpses in Sichuan Province had been buried or cremated, said Jiang Li, vice minister of civil affairs, at a news conference in Beijing, according to state news media. The family of each victim will be paid $725, she added.

Though thousands of people probably remain buried in Beichuan, one of the hardest-hit towns, workers began razing parts of it on Friday, using heavy machinery to knock down buildings.

Medical experts say it is virtually impossible for anyone buried in rubble to be alive after so much time. But calling off the search means that those still classified as missing could remain that way, lost beneath the rubble. They could also be lying in a mass grave or, just maybe, they could be among the five million homeless refugees.

Their eyes gaze out from photos on homemade posters plastered across the province.

At a stadium used as a refugee center in the city of Mianyang, the wall of fliers includes one from Wang Yan. Her 7-year-old daughter was in a school that collapsed in Beichuan. The search for her daughter, an only child, had already taken Ms. Wang to every hospital and refugee center in Mianyang.

“In the beginning, I had hope, but yesterday I saw on the TV that time had run out for people to survive,” said Ms. Wang, 31, eyes brimming with tears as she held up a photo of her daughter in an orange leotard and tights. “Yesterday, I became desperate. I don’t know how to keep looking.

“I hope that God will give my daughter a chance to survive,” she added. “I can lose anything except for my daughter.”

The posters here are even more chilling than those put up after Sept. 11 because many show that several members of the same family are missing. One flier outside Mianyang Central Hospital of a family surnamed Huang has black-and-white photos of a mother, 33; a son, 6; and a daughter, 9. All three are grinning and holding doves while bundled in winter jackets.

Government workers and volunteers have fanned out to hospitals and refugee centers to compile lists of survivors for databases that will help people find those who made it out alive.

Much harder, though, is tracking the dead.

“There’s a big problem when it comes to searching for the missing or the dead,” Jin Yongjie, a Mianyang city government worker, said as he sat at a table outside city hall typing refugee names into a laptop. “There are no records for this in our database.”

Forensic scientists say the most efficient way to identify a body is to have a family member or friend do so by sight. But more than two-thirds of the quake victims suffered head injuries, often disfiguring them, and after three days, corpses decompose to a point where it can be difficult for even close family members to identify them, said Prof. Li Yingbi, a forensic scientist at Sichuan University who led a forensics team in Beichuan for two days.

The bodies that Dr. Liang, a member of the team, was recently examining outside the tea factory were bloated and blackened. Some were missing large chunks of flesh. The heads of many victims in Beichuan had been sheared off.

In the first three days after the quake, bodies from Beichuan were sent down to Anxian County, where survivors could identify them and collect them for burial, Professor Li said. Bodies found afterward were badly decomposed and were considered to pose a threat of disease or water contamination, he said, so the government ordered them quickly buried or cremated after forensic samples were taken.

The samples are the key to identifying the bodies, because dental records are generally not kept in China. The police are in charge of the process and will use the samples to create a database to match DNA from the dead with those of living family members, Professor Li said. The database will take months to create.

It will also be incomplete; many corpses are buried too deep to dig out, especially now that the razing of towns like Beichuan has begun.

Earlier, the police set up three outdoor spots in the town where forensics teams could collect samples.

One of them was the tea factory where Dr. Liang was working on Sunday. He photographed each corpse. From two-thirds of the bodies, he collected cartilage by the ribs, and from the other third he collected two molars each. Skin samples were out of the question; the bodies were too rotten.

He is resigned to the fact that not all bodies will be recovered. “It’s too difficult to get to the bodies,” he said. “A rescue team with 10 people and sufficient equipment will take four hours to dig out one body.”

Professor Li said his eight team members had worked among police crews that took samples from about 600 bodies in two days. Of those, only four were identified by family members who had lingered around Beichuan. Work had slowed considerably by Monday evening; only 10 bodies were found then, he said.

Very few of the bodies had identification cards or cellphones on them, both useful for identifying a victim, Professor Li said. Even then, a DNA sample still has to be taken because the victim may have been carrying someone else’s ID card or phone.

Professor Li estimated that it would take three months for four labs working 24 hours a day to create a DNA database from all the bodies found in the earthquake zone. The next step will be to collect saliva samples from people searching for their relatives to match DNA.

Still, some bodies will remain unidentified because all their family members have been killed, so there is no survivor with whom to do genetic matching.

There is some question as to whether samples are being collected from all the bodies found. An official at the Mianyang Earthquake Rescue and Relief Center said by telephone that too many people had died, so some had been buried even though no photos or samples had been taken. He was initially unsure whom he was talking to, and when reminded that it was a reporter, he said to call the Propaganda Department.

In any case, as time passes, survivors could very well accept the fact they may never identify or properly bury their loved ones.

It is a crucial part of the healing process, said Mei Ting, a psychologist working with refugees in Mianyang.

“Many local people were staying in Beichuan and were reluctant to leave because their family members died there,” she said. “Some continued to stay there because they hadn’t found their missing relatives. But they had to face reality. We have this saying: ‘The dead should give way to the living.’ ”

Jimmy Wang contributed reporting. Huang Yuanxi contributed research from Beijing.

China helps itself

The earthquake in Sichuan

China helps itself

May 22nd 2008 | JIANGYOU
From The Economist print edition

The government's relief effort is impressive; even more inspiring is what ordinary people are doing to fill the gaps


Getty Images

SOME 200 survivors of China's deadliest earthquake in more than 30 years line up for a handout of food. It looks good. There is rice gruel, braised diced pork, courgettes and hot steamed buns. There are also no officials. The Communist Party likes to be seen as society's main benefactor, but this is private aid.

The party has mobilised its own forces on a huge scale in response to the disaster on May 12th in the south-western province of Sichuan, which has left more than 74,000 dead or missing, 247,000 injured and 5m homeless. More than 100,000 troops and police have been deployed to help survivors and to rescue people trapped by rubble and landslides. Hopes of finding more are fast dwindling. But the scale of non-governmental involvement has been just as striking.

The food handout in Jiangyou, a small city 115km (70 miles) east of the epicentre, was being carried out by volunteers from an ad hoc group of private catering companies from another province. The recipients were refugees from the nearby town of Beichuan, which was all but flattened by the earthquake. Their appetising hot meal contrasted with the instant noodles and biscuits offered at other food stations.

Even had it wanted to, it would have been difficult for the government to keep relief efforts in the hands of its usual instruments: military and civilian officials, the Communist Youth League and the Chinese Red Cross. The disaster struck at a time of nationalist fervour fuelled by a widespread feeling that China was being unfairly criticised for its handling of unrest in Tibet. Sentiments were further aroused by blanket coverage of the earthquake in the state-controlled media—a departure from the party's usual tongue-tied approach to disasters.

Responding to the mood, the government declared three days of public mourning from May 19th. Disasters do not normally rate such attention—the last day of public mourning was 11 years ago, on the death of Deng Xiaoping. In Beijing thousands of people gathered in Tiananmen Square to observe an official call for three minutes of silence. They also, spontaneously, chanted slogans and punched their fists in the air, shouting “Come on China!” as police looked on warily. In Chengdu, the provincial capital, on May 21st a police car shadowed about 100 unofficial relief workers who marched through the streets after dark, carrying candles and chanting patriotic slogans.

A fast-growing middle class with money to spare on travel and, as it now seems, on charity, did not wait for official encouragement to help out in Sichuan. Thousands of volunteers headed to the disaster zone, from businessmen to Christian youth. Their cars, some bedecked with flags and slogans, ply the expressway between Chengdu and Jiangyou.

Hundreds of taxis helped ferry the injured to hospitals in the city. At Mianyang, a big city close to Jiangyou, police erected barricades on an approach road to a stadium sheltering some 20,000 refugees, to prevent its being clogged by volunteer vehicles. A government plea for unofficial volunteers to stay away from the disaster zone and concentrate instead on activities such as raising money and donating blood has fallen on deaf ears.

The government seems little inclined to deter the volunteers more rigorously. It knows that public opinion is mostly on its side. The prime minister, Wen Jiabao, appears to have earned considerable kudos by rushing to the scene and staying there for five days to direct relief operations, at one point in tears.

Inside the stadium grounds, which are guarded by militia in camouflage uniforms, stalls set up by volunteer groups offer the refugees services ranging from psychological counselling to the (seemingly more popular) charging of mobile-telephone batteries. An American nurse at one stall helps doctors examine children. In the town of Shifang, south-west of Jiangyou, Buddhist monks say prayers for victims in a temple where the government has settled hundreds of refugees.

The combination of government and volunteer effort appears to have had good results. In refugee camps on the periphery of the disaster zone, tent areas appear clean and orderly, with adequate supplies of food and clean water. There have been no reports of serious outbreaks of disease. Most refugees seem in reasonable spirits. Tents, however, are a problem. Officials say there are still far from enough proper ones. Many refugees are sheltering under makeshift tarpaulin structures. Some Chengdu residents, fearing aftershocks, have taken to sleeping in tents. Demand has pushed up the cost of a small tent fourfold, residents complain, despite government orders to retailers to rein in prices of relief-related materials.

Much of the volunteer effort has involved individuals or small groups. China is still wary of large NGOs and has none that is truly independent of the government specialising in disaster relief. But in recent years the party has begun to acknowledge more openly that there may a role for them. Official press coverage of the earthquake, although careful to highlight the party's contributions, has also paid rare tribute to the unofficial volunteers.

The government has been encouraging firms to give more generously to worthy causes. From this year it has increased tax incentives for corporate donations to charities. But this applies to only a small number of government-approved organisations. For the sake of earthquake relief the authorities are letting down their guard. But the government gives little encouragement to new NGOs and often treats the small existing ones as potential germs of political opposition. The response to this disaster might ease its fears.

南韓抗通膨牛肉風暴

牛肉風暴 李明博聲望跌到2成
【聯合報╱編譯王麗娟/綜合22日外電報導】

南韓政府上月同意恢復美國牛肉進口,引發南韓民眾恐慌和憤怒,認為李明博總統為了爭取和美國簽署自由貿易協定,枉顧民眾健康,進口可能有狂牛病風險的美國 牛肉。李明博眼見美國牛肉風暴愈演愈烈,22日終於為政府忽視國人對美國牛肉的疑慮,公開道歉,冀望平息眾怒。這風暴已使上台才3個月的他聲望直線下墜。

李明博在對全國播出的電視演說中一臉嚴肅地表示,對南韓人擔心美國狂牛病一事,政府確實漠視民意,為此他感到抱歉。接著李明博朝鏡頭鞠躬賠罪。但反對黨認為李明博光是道歉還不夠,要求李明博撤換農業與衛生部長,揚言不撤銷牛肉協議,將杯葛南韓與美國的自由貿易協議。

上周一家報紙所作的民調顯示,上任時聲望達7成的李明博,如今支持度僅剩22.6%。和前三任總統相比,金泳三就職3個月時聲望為80%,金大中約70%,連盧武鉉都有60%,李明博聲望暴跌之勢堪稱前所未有。

美國5年前年出現狂牛病,南韓因此對美國牛肉設禁,但上月18日,南韓同意恢復進口。美國國會開出條件,指南韓不開放美國牛肉進口,就不支持兩國內容廣泛的自由貿易協議。

美國牛肉解禁引發南韓牛肉養殖業者反彈,消費者團體也有疑慮,指政府為了自貿協議枉顧民眾健康。南韓網路上也出現所謂「狂牛病謠言」,把美國牛肉和日前遭 人縱火焚毀的南韓國寶「崇禮門」掛勾,指南韓古代名臣鄭道傳曾預言「崇禮門倒塌國家會滅亡」,滅亡原因之一就是美國牛肉帶來狂牛病。

謠言經過網路和手機簡訊散播,引發恐慌,南韓網友甚至發起「千萬人連署彈劾李明博」行動,連南韓最紅的樂團「神話」團長Eric都加入反美 國牛肉行列,宣稱受汙染的美國牛肉「只要攝取0.1克,就會侵蝕腦部,使腦部組織空洞化」,南韓許多藝人紛紛響應反美國牛肉,使得各地抗議美國牛肉的示威 者中,出現許多藝人的中學生粉絲。

風暴愈演愈烈,李明博政府卻遲遲沒有消毒動作,一直到本月初才在農產部網站上宣導美國牛肉安全無虞,當時李明博還輕鬆的說,「不用擔心美國牛肉,我會帶頭吃」,「擔心美國牛肉安全,不要買就好了嘛」,嚴重低估牛肉風暴嚴重性。

22日李明博終於公開道歉希望滅火,不過仍強調南韓與美國白紙黑字載明,一旦公共衛生威脅出現,將停止進口美國牛肉。但媒體指出,李明博僅 是道歉,這項舉動並不影響雙方的進口協議內容。李明博於演說中一再向國人保證美國牛肉很安全,且政府是根據科學證據,開放全面進口。李明博同時認為政府應 事先對國人多宣導此事。

南韓曾是美國第三大牛肉進口國,每年進口近20萬噸,價值8億5000萬美元。


李明博救經濟 747遇亂流
【經濟日報╱編譯劉道捷/首爾二十四日電】

李明博帶著747計畫就任南韓總統一個月以來,碰到國內外經濟亂流,南韓經濟狀況難以改善,和他去年底在總統大選中贏得壓倒性勝利時大不相同。

李明博贏得總統寶座,靠的只是經濟一個因素,他誓言整頓南韓經濟,提出經濟成長率7%、國民所得4萬美元、晉身世界第七大經濟體的政見,激起人民想像南韓再度起飛的憧憬。

不過李明博才上任一個月,全球信用危機就使他的承諾和南韓經濟黯然失色。

李明博接受幾家外國媒體訪問時說:「我們碰到難以控制的全球經濟危機,美國金融危機對全球經濟的衝擊愈來愈大,影響消費者物價,使大家的日子難過。」

雖然南韓經濟成長超過5%,很多南韓民眾卻因為房價飛升、薪資成長率下降,抱怨日子毫無改善,南韓人民看著中國大陸和日本兩個強鄰,覺得南韓遠遠落在後面。

外部經濟惡化加上國內通膨壓力上升,似乎已經使李明博難以達成今年創造6%經濟成長率的目標,但李明博表示,他的當務之急是打擊通膨。

同時,韓元本月下跌了12天,迫使央行大約拿出10億美元,進入匯市干預。

李明博表示,克服這些難題唯一的方法是透過勞資合作,提高生產力。他保證要透過減稅、解除管制和民營化,改造南韓經濟;也誓言要為國內外企業創造更好的投資環境。


南韓抗通膨 泡麵、白菜物價統統管
【聯合晚報╱編譯朱小明/綜合報導】

只是,長褲要管 襯衫卻不管
蘋果燒酒要管 橘子啤酒卻不管
洗髮精要管 肥皂卻不管…

在南韓總統李明博宣示以打擊通貨膨脹為優先要務後,南韓政府25日宣布把52項家庭必需品的價格列入集中管理,並計畫調降82項影響物價的進口品關稅,其中最重要的是把汽油和柴油的關稅由3%降為1%。

南韓企劃財政部宣布「穩定市民生活的生活用品檢查與應對計畫」,列入價格管制的52項必需品的選擇標準,是分析每月收入247萬韓元(約新台幣7.4萬 元)以下家庭購物和消費習慣,並聽取消費者團體的建議,以安定這些中低收入戶(收入最少的40%)在全球通膨壓力下的生計。

這52種生活用品中有一半去年漲幅超過5%,包括麵粉、蘿蔔、豆腐、洗髮精、補習費等,清單中並包括李明博最關心的速食麵和白菜。

有些人對這份清單覺得費解,例如長褲被列在第24位,但襯衫沒有出現在清單上。洗髮精和清潔劑價格要管制,肥皂則沒有被選中。鯖魚和醍魚須 要價格控制,但其他魚類則不必。蘋果出現在清單中,但橘子和梨子則沒有。而大約台幣30元一瓶的韓國燒酒排名第22,第23位則是白糖,而不是啤酒。

現在韓國人丟得起褲子,但價格可能上漲的襯衫可不行。他們還可以繼續暢飲便宜的國飲燒酒,但喝啤酒可能就得節制,他們不必擔心洗頭髮和洗衣服的問題,洗手要用的肥皂得省著用。

燒酒是否應列為民生必須品引起很大爭議,最後被列入是因為購買燒酒的花費占了低收入者支出一大部分。企劃財政部原本不打算列入包括嬰兒奶粉和嬰兒尿布的嬰兒用品,最後也從善如流的加入。但政府只能直接控制七種公用設施費用,如水電和電話費等,占52項物品的13%。

對於清單上的52種生活必須用品,統計廳計畫以10天為周期調查價格變動,並在每月1日公布消費者物價指數後,評估價格動向。

南韓政府的打擊通貨膨脹措施,包括把汽油、柴油的進口關稅由3%降為1%,並開放大型零售商以自有品牌經營加油站。研議中對82項價格敏感物品降低關稅,旨在減輕消費者和廠商的負擔。

但持反對意見的學者指出,在全球原油、穀物和其他原物價格飆漲下,政府物價管制措施恐怕難以奏效,因為重要物資的價格是由國際市場供需來決定,政府官員對如何落實李明博穩定物價的命令也十分頭痛。

學者指出,有「推土機」之稱李明博似乎認為從經濟成長率到物價都可以政府說了就算,但物價卻是由市場「看不見的手」的法則所左右,政府管制物價只能當做最後手段,否則將破壞市場、甚至拖垮經濟。產品被列管的廠商也大呼,此法違反自由市場原則。




2008年5月20日 星期二

达赖联访:“右手伸给中国政府,左手伸给国际社会”

时事风云 2008.05.20
达赖联访:“右手伸给中国政府,左手伸给国际社会”

Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: 达赖喇嘛(右)与阿嘉活佛(左)

5月19日上午,刚刚结束与德国外展援助部长维乔雷克措伊尔会晤的达赖出现在柏林的中文媒体招待会上。对于中国政府将他比作“披着羊皮的狼”的妖魔化的诋毁,他从来没有往心里去,但“假如中国人民对我有误解,我会感到非常难过。”
专门腾出近两小时宝贵时间的达赖欢迎坦诚对话,由阿嘉活佛做汉藏互译。除德国之声、《华商报》、欧览网等当地媒体之外,中央电视台、新华社、中国国际广播电台、《光明日报》、《环球时报》、上海《文汇报》等驻德记者也参与了联合采访。

记者:西藏流亡政府已与北京举行过7次谈判,迄今一无进展的原因是什么?对于下一轮会谈又有什么期待?

达赖:从2002年双方恢复联系开始,在此次谈判之前,我们已与北京代表有过6次接触。其中第5次对话是在2006年2月份进行的,中央统战部副部长朱维群当时明确指出,"达赖喇嘛不是寻求独立"。但从2006年4月至5月份开始,大陆批判"藏独"分裂势力的语气越来越强烈,等到第6次谈判的时候,官方的态度已经非常强硬了。刚刚结束的第7次会谈是以3.14事件为背景的,与以往相比显得匆忙而又特殊,胡锦涛主席亲自过问,对谈判进展非常关注,双方约定将于6月份的第二个星期举行下一轮对话。这是中国政府第一次对外公开我们的谈判,虽然到目前为止还没有实际结果,但我感到至少在形式上已经明确化了,希望以后还将更加明朗化。我们会谈的主要内容是如何在藏区落实民主、宗教政策,落实宪法。


您所谓的"藏区"究竟是指什么呢?德国前总理施密特日前在《时代》周报发表评论文章,批评您将青海、甘肃、云南、四川藏人聚居地纳入"大藏区"的版图之内是一种错误的做法,因为中国人口膨胀带来的压力必将迫使汉人未来将向地广人稀的高原地区迁徙,您是否会在这个问题上作出战略性的让步?

我从来没有说过"大西藏"、"大藏区"这样的名词。除了宪法规定的自治区之外,还有自治州、自治县。前一阵的示威、暴力事件也是在自治区之外多有发生,表明这些地方的问题也亟待解决,而我只想作这一地区的义务代言人。早在1969年,我就提出达赖机构是否继续存在下去要由西藏人民做主,1992年我又重温了这个问题,那时我已决定,只要西藏能够实现真正意义上的自治,达赖机构就可以撤销,将权力移交给当地政府。自治是一个很细的问题,需要很细的探讨和研究。至于人口从稠密地区迁往稀少地区,道理虽然不错,但西藏是很特殊的。我也提倡汉藏大团结,例如汉族可以把美味饭菜介绍给藏族,藏族也可以向汉族提供精神食粮,目前在拉萨就生活着20万汉人、10万藏人。从西藏到印度去学习的年轻人也很不少,我在他们身上看到了一些与当地流亡藏人不一样的习性,也因此而察觉到藏族文化的消融。但我从来没有像一些媒体所说的那样,要求汉族人从藏族人的地盘上搬迁出去。

您是否提出过要在西藏取消社会主义制度,撤出中国军队,将自治区交给国际和平组织讨论?

西藏自治区的国防和外交政策将由中央政府负责,除此之外,文化、宗教和环境事务交给当地藏人管理。至于实行哪种制度?我想600万藏族人中恐怕找不到一个希望恢复原来的政教合一。虽然资本主义制度在当今世界上占据强势地位,但我到东欧访问的时候,提出过这样一个看法:能不能将资本主义和社会主义的优点结合起来?目前大陆基本上是在进入资本主义而放弃社会主义,由此而生的贫富差距越来越大。
我曾经提过在条件成熟的情况下,经由中、印两国政府同意,可以考虑在喜马拉雅地区成立一个特别和平区域,但这可能是下一代才能做到的事情。
那么这一代呢?您有没有说过要将中国军队撤离出去?
没有,我从未说过这样的话。这是没有必要的担心和顾虑。
您刚刚会晤了德国发展援助部长,能不能向我们介绍一下相关情况?
我们谈到了相互对话的重要性,一致认为,任何问题只有通过对话才能得到解决。我向德国部长介绍了西藏问题的发展现状,以及第7轮正式会谈的情况。此前几次对话缺乏进展的原因也有涉及。

国际社会的压力真的有助于解决西藏问题吗?还是可能会适得其反?

汉藏之间的矛盾只有双方才能解决。但国际社会有权来表达他们的关心。
但西方国家在西藏问题上的指手画脚很令中国民众反感。
国际上存在着一些声援西藏组织,我也收到过他们的邀请,参加过他们的活动。我一向说,我把右手伸给中国政府,把左手伸给国际社会,现在,我的右手还是空的,左手已经得到了支持和呼吁,我也对此表示感谢。如果我的右手得到了满意的回答,我还可以把左手收回来说:"谢谢!再见!"

在您此次访德期间,德国地区第一次举行了雄天派喇嘛的示威活动,他们抗议您限制了他们的信仰自由,这是怎么回事呢?

雄天派已经有370年的历史,关于他们的问题早在第五世达赖喇嘛的时候就已经出现。第五世达赖喇嘛也许是历代达赖中对雄天认识最深刻的一个。雄天在藏传佛教中是一种"反祈福"的神,所谓"反祈福"的意思就是祝愿不好的事情。我以前曾经信奉过雄天,因为我的一位老师赤江仁波切就是拜雄天的。从50年代开始到72年、73年,我一直信奉雄天,没有理会从五世至十三世达赖的反对。这是我犯的一个错误,犯错的最大原因在于我自己。后来,西藏甘丹寺北院出了问题,我们在卦象中看到这是因为供奉雄天的缘故。事情明朗化之后,我意识到信奉雄天的害处。有意思的是,中国政府非常支持雄天,第6次会谈的时候,他们提出的新的一条就是"我们对雄天欺压很深"。但我并没有禁止喇嘛信奉雄天,我只是说如果信奉的话就会不顺。最近在南印度的一次法会上有过关于这个问题的争论,我们提出用公投的方法来决定。结果1万人中有大约有9500人赞同"不信",500人赞同"信"。所以寺庙里就定下了这个清规戒律。但是雄天派喇嘛依然有言论自由。今天他们来这里喊口号示威,我非常欢迎。



如果收到中国方面的邀请,您是否愿意参加北京奥运会?


奥运圣火刚刚点燃的时候,我就呼吁藏区社会要支持奥运。因为这是一件让拥有13亿人口的大国感到骄傲的事情。火炬传递在伦敦、巴黎出现问题以后,我也专门嘱咐过旧金山的藏区负责人,千万不要进行干扰活动。就像在雄天的问题上一样,有人听我的,有人不听。另外我也曾劝告印度藏青会不要徒步返乡,没有奏效。关于北京奥运,我们正在进行会谈,如果各方面进展顺利,我是非常愿意去的。

如果有朝一日您能回到中国,您将担任一个怎样的角色?

我在流亡生涯里已经是半退休状态了,今后也不想再担任任何职务。如果还有人信奉我,就把我当成是一个活佛吧。我最大的心愿就是云游四海。从54年开始,我就一直想去五台山看看,83年又提出过这个愿望,92年再提,但一直没有实现。以后有机会的话还是非常想去。