May 15, 2008
EastSouthWestNorth has an extensive set of pictures of the damage and human tragedy wreaked by the Sichuan earthquake. They are culled from a variety of sources, and there are a lot of them, more than 150 and rising. None is captioned. But I found their very anonymity along with their sheer number made this mute tribute to lives so unexpectedly shaken even more moving.
Here, too, is a snapshot of the latest situation map (.pdf) from ReliefWeb.
Click on the image to enlarge it.
With the death toll now passing 19,000, the first foreign aid workers will be arriving from Japan on Friday, the Japan International Cooperation Agency announced. The first of two squads that comprise a 60-strong rescue team set off from Tokyo’s Narita airport on Thursday evening.
Xinhua also reports that China is allowing Taiwan-based China Airlines to fly in relief material. An aircraft carrying supplies being given to the Red Cross Society of China was due to leave Taipei late Thursday afternoon for Chengdu. There are separate reports that 30 volunteers from Taiwan, including doctors and nurses, are helping rescue efforts.
May 14, 2008
Another map of the affected area: this one from USAid, showing the how many people were exposed to shaking in each zone of intensity.
Reuters has a summary of foreign aid donations. Highlights
Hong Kong: $38 million from government, $4.3 million from The Hong Kong Jockey Club
Macau: $14.3 million from government
Taiwan: $6,450 from President-elect Ma Ying-jeou. $43 million from companies including Formosa Plastics and Hon Hai, and entrepreneurs. Government has offered to send a 58-person search and rescue team;
United States: $500,000 as an “initial contribution”
Japan: $4.8 million.
Russia: Sent in first batch of international aid to reach China; a transport plane carrying 30 tonnes of relief material arrived in Chengdu on Wednesday.
Extended list at Reuters.
May 14, 2008
The macroeconomic impact of the earthquake in Sichuan is likely to be modest in the medium and long-term, and less than that of the severe snowstorms this past winter.
The region is not as important an industrial centre as those on the east coast. Sichuan accounts for 3.9% of China’s GDP and 2.5% of its manufacturing output and Chongqing for 1.6% of GDP and 1% of manufacturing output. Nor is the region a big exporter. It accounts for no more than 1% of all exports.
There is processing of raw materials. The quake has disrupted power supplies to aluminum smelters and two chemical plants have collapsed. Most heavy industry has stopped anyway and will not resume until safety and damage checks have been completed. There is likely to be some spike in prices of metals and raw materials. Sichuan also supplies more than a quarter of the country’s natural gas. How much damage there is to production and distribution will determine how damaging that proves to be to the country as a whole, but the gas fields are south of the quake’s epicenter so should have escaped the worst.
A larger inflationary concern will be for the prices of two foods already suffering from rising prices, pork and rice. Sichuan is China’s biggest pig farming province (it supplies 10% of the country’s pork) and grows 7.3% of the country’s rice. The interruption to supplies will be exacerbated for as long as transport links to the rest of China remain disrupted. That is likely to be a short term effect.
On the plus side the rebuilding of the region will provide a stimulus to local economic activity, especially the construction of earthquake proof buildings in Chongqing and Chengdu, which China is trying to build up into a local version of Silicon Valley. The Intel plant there is running on back up power and has sent its workforce home until midweek. Of the 29 listed Sichuan companies whose shares were suspended from trading on the Shanghai stock exchange on Monday, 23 have said the disaster had no or limited impact on their operations. But attention on rebuilding and recovery will have to wait while rescue and search continues.
May 13, 2008
This is a snapshot of the latest earthquake situation map (pdf) on ReliefWeb, which may help you fit a location to the names you are reading elsewhere. Click on the image to enlarge it.
Red Cross/Red Cresent has a more detailed map.
Latest reports says the death toll is now around 12,000 with 100,000 unaccounted for. Rain is hampering the search and rescue efforts with rocks and mud slides blocking the hilly roads to the epicenter.
Donations are pouring in from home and abroad. Hebei, Shanxi, Liaoning, Shanghai, Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu, all of which felt the tremors, have given more than 47 million yuan ($6.7 million), according to Wang Zhenyao, director in charge of disaster relief with the Ministry of Civil Affairs. Japan is giving $5 million. Billionaire Li Ka Shing’s foundation says it will donate 30 million yuan. Residents of Tangshan, hit by a 7.8-magnitude quake in 1976, have raised 10million yuan. Companies like COSCO and the Wanda Group have also made donations. Carrefour, the French hypermarkets group that was recently the target of anti-pro-Tibet demonstrations, has given 2 million yuan. Beijing is also earmarking 2 million yuan for Tibetan and Qiang minorities affected by the quake.
The U.N. says its disaster assistance teams are on standby should Beijing request assistance. But so far, China is handling the search and rescue itself.
May 12, 2008
Copying the below directly from the Shanghaiist for those who would like to contribute towards disaster relief for the Sichuan earthquake via the Red Cross of China, which is now appealing for donations.
Account name: Red Cross Society of China
开户单位：中国红十字会总会
For those who want to donate in RMB: you can send money to the RMB account at the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China branch below:
人民币开户行: 中国工商银行 北京分行东四南支行
人民币账号: 0200001009014413252
For those who want to donate in foreign currency, you can send money to the foreign currency account at the CITIC Bank branch below:
外币开户行：中信银行酒仙桥支行
外币账号: 7112111482600000209
Hotline: (8610) 65139999
Online donations: Red Cross Society of China website: www.redcross.org.cn
Click the tab for online donations
Props to China Law Blog from whom I have shamelessly stolen this idea for this post, but every little helps.
As the severity of the disaster becomes increasingly apparent, Relief Web is a useful source of the latest information on the relief effort.
This map (pdf) shows the area and populations most affected by the tremors.
May 12, 2008
Amid the human tragedy of the cyclone in Myanmar and the earthquake in Sichuan, it is hard not to recognize the differences in response by the two governments.
The secretive military junta in Burma seems to lack the capacity, or will, to deal with the crisis. The country’s leader General Than Shwe hasn’t been heard from let alone seen. Only now is a trickle of aid getting to survivors. More than a week on, a second wave of disaster in the form of disease is about to strike. A death toll in the hundreds of thousands is not out of the question.
In contrast, Beijing has dispatched troops to help with relief work in Sichuan, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao is going to the area immediately and state media is being open and quick in its reporting by its own lights. With schools collapsed and remote areas still be be reached, the death toll from the strongest earthquake to hit the province in 30 years could rise into the thousands (Xinhua is already reporting 3,000-5,000 feared dead).
But in one country a natural disaster is turning into a humanitarian catastrophe; in the other a natural disaster is being dealt with as best it can.
May 11, 2008
Asia Sentinel has pulled down its Shenzhen Olympic torch protest story, saying that, though it came from a previously reliable source, it isn’t “sufficiently verifiable”.
Meanwhile this sounds much more believable: The AP reports that a 28-year-old man, identified only as Tang, was detained in Zhenjiang in Jiangsu province for saying on the Internet that he planned to grab the Olympic torch during its relay through eastern China. Tang was detained on May 7 and will be held for 10 days, according to an official in the local public security bureau.
May 9, 2008
Chinese don’t use the Internet the same way as Americans. They are technologically a step into the future in one respect, mobile services like gaming and IM via QQ, and a throwback in another, bulletin board systems (BBS) are at the heart of most websites.
Tom Melcher’s Live from Beijing blog explores the later.
I can’t overstate the importance of a website’s BBS to Chinese Internet users. Time and again, through informal conversations and more formal online polling, I have confirmed that an active, well moderated BBS is far more valuable than professionally-developed content. In every subject area imaginable, from the latest news, to having a baby, to decorating a house, to raising your children, the advice and comments of presumably-ordinary people literally power the traffic and interaction within the Chinese internet. Every major successful Chinese B2C website I know began as a BBS.
Paul Denlinger, takes up the baton on The China Vortex. exploring the marketing and advertising implications for foreign companies.
Most westerners who come into the China Internet market have no idea of its power and influence, and instead think that the Chinese Internet is largely the same as the US market, but it isn’t. The Chinese government doesn’t really like BBSes because it really is free (as in free speech), and is the breeding ground for all kinds of weird stuff. And while it is important for gathering buzz on products (as CIC, based in Shanghai, does) for corporations, nobody has really been able to monetize it.
Bottom line: social media in China are alive, well and 10 years old. And like many 10 year olds, often overlooked, misunderstood and off in their own world, where they can make mischief for all the adults.
May 8, 2008
The events-of-consequence side of me feels I should be noting the progress in Sino-Japanese relations being brought by President Hu Jintao’s visit to Japan: agreement to an annual summit and generally being good eggs with each other, even though the dispute over gas in the East China Sea remains unresolved. China Economic Review has a summary.
But the curious side of me is intrigued by a report on Asia Sentinel that a couple of protesters managed to extinguish the Olympic flame when it was in Shenzhen. Frankly, I find this incredible, or at least I am incredulous. But the site promises video is coming to support the report. So I guess we’ll see.
Update: Still no sign of the video. Plus there is one comment on the Asia Sentinel story by Henk saying he was close to the spot where the incident is supposed to have taken place, and he saw nothing.
Update 2: The video clip is now up. Still not sure what it shows. A huge crowd, some jostling, a brief glimpse of a torch without flame. But a protest? Hardly.
May 7, 2008
China is relocating more than half a million people from the arid highlands of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region to new homes close to the Yellow River, Xinhua reports for no particularly apparent reason now.
A stop along the old Silk Road in northwestern China hard on the border with Inner Mongolia, Ningxia has a large Muslim ethnic minority, the Hui, who account for a third of the population. But it is mountainous country with little fertile land, rainfall or natural resources. Growing wolfberries, which are used in traditional medicine as well as a food, is the main source of income, augmented by a little tourism. Ningxia grows two-fifths of China’s wolfberries, which flourish in the mineral rich silt of the Yellow River’s floodplain washed down from neighbouring Gansu province’s Loess plateau. Even so, Ningxia is poor, with the third smallest economy of any province.
More than 370,000 people have been relocated since 1983, and, Xinhua says, another 206,00 will moved over the next five years. Much like the plan to relocate 100,000 Tibetan nomads by 2010, the Ningxia program is said to be aimed at restoring the ecology of an area suffering from desertification. Same ecological point was made about the controversial Three Gorges location of 1.4 million people, too.
The other underlying message in the Xinhua report is that relocation lifts ethnic minorities out of poverty. That has echoes elsewhere, too.
