The government has 1400000000000 dollars sitting there and you want to send them money.

no what money would i send to china gov?, one might send it to the disaster aid groups, who i presume partially fund the rescue specialists who need money to fund what they do.

Send away

here's that town
http://bp1.blogger.com/_zJrVQFqitUA/SCy4JzjMYTI/AAAAAAAAC9k/SiXVWpobNvE/s1600-h/formosat.jpg

look at it

I can't see anything from that height.

its just weird how to have all the development in the sliver it must be a mining town, you;d have to have a strong reason to live there.

There are zinc smelters there that have cracked, you are right lostexpection

I am at the moment reading that new biography on Mao by Hallyday. It is hairraising in the depiction of how little value was placed on human life. One of the policies that Mao had put in place was that a peasant could not relocate from a village even to the next village without special permission. This was to continue into futher generations. I do not know how long this policy lasted but maybe it lead to crammed towns like that. Maybe the pent up demand for migration is what we now see with millions headed for the cities.

yes my impression is right wing dictators kill their dissenters and create vpoor and very rich, and left wing dictators neglect and restrain their people either way, lots die

did you see the footage on itv tonight some guy film for an hour, starting 20's second after the earthquake hit, you couldn't see for the grey dust of crumpled concrete, you can imagine about 10,000 were killed with cheap buildings fall in that moment.

i bet this was company town, i wonder whether its directors have left the country with any cash they could get their hands on.

Substandard construction is par for the course in a communist system. In fact my opinion is that the more socialised any operation is the lower the quality because why should anyone care.

ah well your right there but the buildings didn't look big enough for one those grand communist schemes, i say it the ugliest mix of the two corporate and communist. and sure the company is the same, that's what i was implying.

It does not have to be big. The quality of the cement would be, that simple mortar block buildings would crumble.
I don't even know if you could describe China by any of the old frames of reference. The army seems to own a part of everything if my understanding is correct and bribes are needed. The ending of Animal Farm is apt, it is hard to distinguish the pigs.

youngdan wrote:

It does not have to be big. The quality of the cement would be, that simple mortar block buildings would crumble.
I don't even know if you could describe China by any of the old frames of reference. The army seems to own a part of everything if my understanding is correct and bribes are needed. The ending of Animal Farm is apt, it is hard to distinguish the pigs.

Do I remember that you are an engineer youngdan? You will have seen pictures of whats happened and may have some idea whether structures failed that should not have failed?

It seems to be acknowledged that there was a type of school building that had been built that failed. It was perhaps one of those buildings with a big span and a slab- there were a few that went recently in Europe and Russia that were mainly sports halls and swimming pools. I would have thought it is too soon to say about the rest - the epicentre of an earthquake is not a good place for a building to be.

I have not looked at too many pictures Cactus but what you see does not tell you much. In any decent sized project there will be an engineer with his eyes open. He will be making sure that the building will be built exactly like the plans call for. He will make sure that the number and type of rebar is installed before the concrete is poured. The installer might br trying to keep some bar for himself and if some are not in all bets are off. He will grab many samples of the concrete as it is poured and it will be tested later for quality because if it is not up to scratch then the design is no good. He will be watching to make sure that the beams are what the design calls for and not a thinner beam for example. The beams themselves would have quality control at the factory but the buibing engineer might be assuming that the steel was as it should be.
For smaller buildings it would be more simple. A builder would be mixing say 5 bags of cement into a pile of sand but if he robbed one the resulting concrete would be a lot weaker.
Everything has to be watched. The tunnel here in Boston had a slab fall down and kill a woman a while back because the screws used to fasten it were not the ones called for in the design. A shorter screw was used because it was easier to screw in.

The frogs are still nervous http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5igI1mejD7Ucjy6QhulU6JMdxjJFw

youngdan wrote:

The frogs are still nervous http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5igI1mejD7Ucjy6QhulU6JMdxjJFw

I wouldn't think it would be wise to ignore the frogs.