中國視點

China Earthquake‘s Toll Reflects Big Growth Gaps

漢 | 大 | 中 | 小2008年05月14日08:57
With the death toll in China‘s earthquake passing 12,000, the devastation poses a particular challenge to China‘s leaders because it has highlighted an issue they have made a priority: the growing gaps in the nation‘s economic prosperity.

On Tuesday, rescue and relief workers struggled to reach victims in some of the remote areas most damaged by the magnitude-7.9 quake in the southwestern province of Sichuan. Steady rain hindered transportation and threatened to exacerbate the suffering of tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of people left homeless in China‘s worst natural disaster in decades.

The death toll in Sichuan alone had exceeded 12,000 as of Tuesday evening, with more than 26,000 injured and at least 9,400 buried in debris, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported, quoting a senior provincial official.

As soldiers and paramilitary police rushed to dig victims out from collapsed schools, homes and hospitals, it has become increasingly clear that the quake‘s greatest destruction was visited on rural areas -- and the small but fast-growing towns that have mushroomed from the farm fields in recent years as part of China‘s rapid urbanization. Such areas have far less stringent building-safety practices than China‘s relatively wealthy big cities, experts say, leaving their residents more vulnerable when disaster struck.

On the outskirts of the small city of Shifang, east of the epicenter, Fang Haiying, a 40-year-old rice farmer, said more than 10 members of her village remained buried in the rubble of their houses. She and her extended family were wearing surgical masks to protect themselves from a chemical leak at a damaged plant a few kilometers away. ‘We‘ve been waiting but no one from the government has come. We have nothing to eat.‘

Nearly every house in Yinhua village on Shifang‘s western edge was destroyed. Boulders shaken loose by Monday‘s quake, some as big as vans, litter the main road in the area, along with the vehicles they knocked over or crushed.

Refugees from the destruction walked down the narrow mountain roads to Yinhua in search of transportation out of the quake-stricken area. Two 15-year-old boys said they had walked three hours from their village in the mountains to get to Yinhua. The two, Chen Shi and Zheng Jia, said their middle school, as so many others, had collapsed within seconds of the quake hitting. About 100 of their schoolmates died, the boys said.

The disparity was seen from the glitzy new office towers and hotels of Chengdu, Sichuan‘s bustling capital of nearly 10 million people. The city suffered relatively little damage in Monday‘s quake, even though it sits just 90 kilometers southeast of the epicenter.

But in Beichuan County, about 160 kilometers from the epicenter, nearly 1,000 paramilitary police were searching frantically Tuesday for survivors in a school that collapsed, burying at least 1,000 students and teachers. The Beichuan Middle School‘s main building, formerly seven stories tall, had been reduced to a pile of rubble about two meters high, Xinhua reported. One teenage victim was pulled out with no legs, Xinhua reported. Authorities have estimated the death toll there could reach more than 3,000.

At least nine schools collapsed across the quake zone, trapping thousands of children. On the ground and over the Internet, there was rising anger at authorities over the loss of so many young people.

Natural disasters often exact their worst tolls on the disadvantaged, who tend to live in subpar housing -- as was true with Hurricane Katrina in the southern U.S. Yet, the issue is especially thorny for China‘s government, as President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao have based much of the public legitimacy of their administration on trying to address a widening wealth gap resulting from decades of market-oriented retooling of the economy.

China‘s booming economy has lifted the economic fortunes of most of its citizens, but some have gained far more than others. Economists say China, still nominally socialist, is now among the most unequal major economies in the world. Much of this disparity is seen in the contrast between residents of the big wealthy cities, and those of small, less-well-off towns and rural areas.

Rural incomes, for example, averaged 4,140 yuan a person last year, or about $590 at current exchange rates, an increase of 91% from a decade earlier, not adjusted for inflation. Urban disposable incomes, by comparison, more than doubled in the same period, to an average of 13,786 yuan last year.

Mr. Wen, who flew to the disaster zone within hours of the quake Monday, spent Tuesday touring affected areas and offering the public reassurance that Beijing would help those worst affected.

‘We will try our best to send milk powder to parents and ensure children do not go hungry,‘ Mr. Wen told victims after learning of shortages of food, drinking water and tents in parts of the affected area, Xinhua reported.

On the ground, authorities scrambled to rescue survivors. China‘s defense ministry said that as of Tuesday afternoon, nearly 20,000 soldiers and paramilitary police had arrived in quake-hit areas, with a further 30,000 en route in planes, trains and trucks, or on foot, Xinhua reported. Repeated aftershocks complicated efforts and prompted thousands to seek refuge outside in makeshift tents scattered across the region.

The epicenter of the quake, Wenchuan County, has remained largely cut off from rescuers. Because of the bad weather, officials scrapped plans to fly relief supplies in by helicopter, then again scrapped a second plan to send in rescuers by parachute. About 1,300 military doctors and soldiers had finally reached Wenchuan by foot nearly 24 hours after the quake struck. By Tuesday evening, officials in Wenchuan had reported 57 confirmed deaths, but said the fate of about 60,000 residents remained unclear. ‘I am so worried. So worried,‘ Xinhua quoted He Biao, a local official, as saying by telephone.

Architects said the varied impact of the quake likely reflects widespread differences in construction materials and technical skills between wealthy Chengdu and the poorer towns around it, as well as often patchy enforcement of building codes. In most of China, engineering drawings and construction work are technically subject to independent verification that a building can withstand earthquakes.

‘There are a lot of holes,‘ says a Shanghai-based architect who often works in Sichuan province.

Adding to the pressure is that thousands of little-known cities are literally sprouting up from pastureland in China as farmers become city dwellers. China‘s urbanization push is bringing as many as 15 million people into cities annually. All of them need shelter, often as cheaply and quickly as possible.

The trend has helped make the world‘s most populous country the world‘s largest construction zone. China built about 1.8 billion square meters of property in 2006, with an additional 4.1 billion square meters under construction, according to government statistics. Such rapid urbanization is transforming Sichuan, one of China‘s biggest provinces with a population of about 82 million -- roughly equal to Germany‘s. The mountainous province ranked fifth out of China‘s provinces for the amount of floor space it laid down in 2006, erecting almost twice as much property as completed in Beijing.

In hastily built towns around Pengzhou, about 60 kilometers southeast of the epicenter area, local residents acknowledged the construction of their now-destroyed homes was often shoddy, with brick structures often held in place with concrete and little consideration given to safety. Liao Xiaoling said her brother-in-law was thrown from an upstairs window and her 86-year-old father crushed under a wall when the brick structure that was both their home and business toppled during the quake. ‘Our home is gone,‘ she said.

In addition to the collapsed schools, two hospitals also suffered damage in Sichuan. Some experts say public funds often accumulate more slowly than new residents in fast-developing areas, and are often diverted to other uses, such as building lavish local government offices.

Government officials warned against drawing conclusions that particular kinds of buildings were more vulnerable than others. Li Bingren, the spokesman at China‘s Ministry of Construction, said buildings in the disaster area were built to code but that the quake and its aftershocks were ‘stronger and higher than the designed resistance level.‘ Schools, he said, tend to have larger rooms and are bigger than many ordinary buildings, exacerbating the toll when they fail.

China‘s building code has long required that new structures be built to withstand earthquakes, according to Huang Shimin, an earthquake engineering expert at the China Academy of Building Research in Beijing. Throughout Sichuan, the specification is grade 7 out of 10. The same level applies in Shanghai. But it indicates less concern in Sichuan about quakes than in Beijing where the specification is 8, reflecting the capital‘s close proximity to the epicenter of China‘s 1976 earthquake that killed 240,000.

‘Based on China‘s codes for earthquake-resistance in building designs, if there is no problem in specific design and construction, China‘s capability to resist the earthquake should be strong,‘ says Mr. Huang. ‘But there are many uncertain issues related to the earthquake, so it‘s still a complicated issue.‘

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At the People‘s Hospital in Pengzhou, nurses estimated they had treated at least a thousand injured people. A lack of electricity prompted hospital officials to evacuate patients outside into blue tents in the hospital‘s parking lot and backyard. The hospital was starting to run out of water Tuesday afternoon, and many patients were frantic because they had been separated from their families and unable to reach them because of downed phone networks. Some were told to go home, but they say they have no homes to which to return.

Zhou Yan, a 26-year-old farmer, was in a tent recovering from a head injury she got as some bricks from the second floor fell on her head. Doctors say she is free to go but there is no way for her to get home; and when she does, she says, ‘I have no home to go back to. It‘s all gone.‘ Ms. Zhou‘s husband is a migrant worker who makes furniture in Shenyang. He got in touch with her and was worried sick but no buses were available for him to take home; it is his first week away from his family. She believes the parents of her niece, who was staying with her when the quake hit, are dead.

Ms. Zhou says her house was built more than 10 years ago, and was a brick, two-story home, which is common in this area. They never thought to build it to withstand earthquakes, especially of this magnitude. It would cost at least 100,000 yuan to rebuild it, money she says will be ‘impossible‘ to save. ‘There‘s just no way. I don‘t know what to do next, or who to ask.‘

Loretta Chao / Jason Leow / James T. Areddy / Gordon Fairclough