China Earthquake

12,000 people are dead due to another horriffic natural disaster, this time an earthquake in China. The death toll is expected to rise.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7397489.stm
China has accepted offers of international aid. They are bringing in 50,000 troops to assist with the rescue efforts; China's army has a good record in this regard.

It is also a very large army which helps, however it will certainly stretch their resources greatly. Any disaster of this magnitude, particularly in an underdeveloped region (China itself being rather underdeveloped and this is an undeveloped region of China) will result in a catastrophic loss of infrastructure as was demonstrated in Burma.

hope all those new buildings they built were built well, still havn't seen the epicentre on tv yet?

The death toll has been revised sharply upwards in recent times to over 50,000. RTÉ is carrying a report on it below:

http://www.rte.ie/news/2008/0515/quake.html

Much ado over nothing. Compared to the percentage loss of Burmese it is tiny. 24000 die each day from hunger http://www.thehungersite.com/
What is needed is an earthquake every 2 days back there to match that.

yeah the burnese thing is turning out to nearly as bad as the tsunami last year
what did the death toll end up being there about 200,000?


we won't need to worry about population growth after this think of all the major disaster, the tsunami, the pakistan earthquake etc


the thing is you can never compare those being wiped out in few minutes with those dieing from hunger over a matter of even days or months like some aid agencies like to do.

see those pic from those mountian towns with 4 story apartment blocks stuck in these tiny valleys bizarre.

According to this article 5 million will have died from Aids in South Africa by 2010. http://new.hst.org.za/news/index.php/20020903/ There is practically zero talk about Aides here because it is looked upon as very difficult to get. So 50000 chinese is just 1 hundred of that.

youngdan wrote:

According to this article 5 million will have died from Aids in South Africa by 2010. http://new.hst.org.za/news/index.php/20020903/ There is practically zero talk about Aides here because it is looked upon as very difficult to get. So 50000 chinese is just 1 hundred of that.

That seems to be a good site youngdan. It can't be that difficult to get if so many people have it.

yes but 50,000 in day, its simple not comparable, your are being thick today

50,000 in a day is a terrible shock and trauma. People dying day after day of sickness or hunger would be terrible in a different way.

50000 a day. We have already seen that 48000 every 2 days die of hunger. 11 million chinese die every year so that is about 30000 a day.
Cactus, it is very difficult to get here but nearly everyone in Africa has it it seems, why is that.

okay 50,000 fatally injured in a few hours or 150,000 in few hours of the tsunami in the same local area from the same direct immediate cause that is NOT COMPARABLE to hunger/poverty/aids deaths over the span of a year.

Last night's C4 news detected some changes to the usual Chinese policy of hush / deny / clamp down. People are posting messages on the web, desperately looking for loved ones, asking for / giving news. (being brutal for a mo) the Chinese govt seem to have learnt from previous PR disasters such as the current heart-rending situation in Burma, the Kursk, Katrina etc by trying to ensure the highest level possible of technical competence in dealing with this.
ie there seems to be acceptance on the part of the Chinese govt that they must do their best on this in order to have any hope of maintaining some legitimacy ... unless some story today has blown that theory out of the water.

Politically and environmentally this is a huge story.


... but my donation will go to anyone who can guarantee helping the poor Burmese.

yes i saw the news mention that trend, i still see a lot of footage of army busywork though and spectaculars like the parachute drops and politicians food aid photo ops, they said it was 24hr rolling footage of the army helping, going a bit ott to show them helping it seems.

it might have been better in some areas to enforce building standards bit late now.

they're becoming more like the west then the west every day.

how will this effect the rural-urban dissent that happening in the last few years i don't know

I am talking about daily totals. 24000 for hunger worldwide every day. 30000 everyday in China from natural causes.

well that's worldwide or china which is massive still not comparable. the direct cause of their deaths doesn't occur that day.

Here is an interesting thought http://observers.france24.com/en/content/20080513-toads-predict-earthquake-dead-china

youngdan wrote:

Here is an interesting thought http://observers.france24.com/en/content/20080513-toads-predict-earthquake-dead-china

That Observers site is interesting youngdan.

I'm quivering as I ask this question, youngdan, but what do you think of Naomi Klein? There were an interesting couple of sections on the Chinese situation on BBC2's Newsnight tonight.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/

http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine

Actually, Naomi spoke more about Burma than China on tonight's programme, but the Shock Doctrine template can presumably be applied to any number of situations.

Crony capitalism ... disasters as politically volatile moments ... govts can use such moments to carry out a pre-arranged agenda which might not otherwise be capable of being implemented without trouble from the public. As I say, she spoke about Burma, as does her website, mentioning that contracts are already being handed out by the Burmese govt for rebuilding based on "Yes" votes in the referendum / called one partic. company "the Burmese Halliburton".

totally accept Lostexpectation's point above, but I guess the Chinese govt know only too well how moments like this can be very dangerous. Haven't had time to see how CCTV are portraying all of this, will try to tune in Fri. evening.

Social upheaval can be the result too. An earthquake can shake the foundations of government.

cactus flower wrote:

Social upheaval can be the result too. An earthquake can shake the foundations of government.

absolutely. Interesting times, interesting times, when are the Olympics due to start?

( Btw, while I think of it, the head research office of China's nuclear industry is apparently stationed in Chengdu. Plus there are a number of civilian nuclear stations in the general area of the earthquake. )

There was something about that in MN News Review either yesterday or the day before. Hopefully no leaks.
There are some very important zinc furnaces cracked though according to Bloomberg.

That link sent me to something called White City in London. I do not know too much about Klein but will study her a bit. It seems her family were marxists. The problem with socialism is that it's leaders care as much for the general welfare as Caligula. I expect that I will find her views agreeable
Governments tend to use disastors to their own advantage. In the China earthquake I would urge everyone to give zero. Amidst all the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth it seems to be forgotten that the Chinese sit on 1.4 trillion dollars in reserves. So not a cent

If what we see on the news is anything to go by (and there have not been any complaints of reporting restrictions) they are doing pretty well.

youngdan wrote:

That link sent me to something called White City in London. I do not know too much about Klein but will study her a bit. It seems her family were marxists. The problem with socialism is that it's leaders care as much for the general welfare as Caligula. I expect that I will find her views agreeable
Governments tend to use disastors to their own advantage. In the China earthquake I would urge everyone to give zero. Amidst all the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth it seems to be forgotten that the Chinese sit on 1.4 trillion dollars in reserves. So not a cent

ah cos somebody else isn't supposed to care we shouldn't either, constantly lowering standards dan.


i still find that town squeezed into that tiny valley bizarre.