Interpreting the Sichuan earthquake
Updated: 2008-06-12 10:56
State-run media no longer enjoyed exclusive access to disaster news sources. At least 550 journalists, including 300 foreigners from 114 overseas news outlets, swarmed into the quake-hit areas.
Old-trade news organizations are becoming less important for people learning news in today's China, a country with the world's largest contingent of 221 million web surfers. BBS, blogs, chat-rooms and image-sharing portals such as flickr and youtube, are omnipresent, in addition to another network of information sharing, SMS via cell phones.
Concerned Netizens voice their opinions on a number of issues, from the distribution of relief funds to conflict of interests between local officials and relief workers, to school building overhauls to the wise planning of post-quake reconstruction.
Via the immediately reactive and even proactive media, the central government responded, in a timely fashion, to people's outcries with promises that relief would be distributed under close surveillance. Any corruption involved in subcontracting school buildings would be carefully investigated. Improvements in government emergency-responsive mechanism
Ten minutes after the major quake hit, the People's Liberation Army's (PLA) Chengdu Military Command set up an emergency command and control center; three minutes later, the Central Military Commission kicked off a top-down coordination mechanism at its Beijing headquarters.
Braving continuous aftershocks, President Hu Jintao visited the most devastated areas to show solidarity and the resolution of the whole nation in face of the natural disaster.
Within two hours of the quake, Premier Wen Jiabao boarded a hastily-prepared plane to the quake-ravaged counties. He visited Sichuan on three occasions to pacify the survivors and inspect the efforts to defuse the threat of risky quake lakes.
Members of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee visited quake-hit Sichuan or adjacent provinces that were also affected.
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