Government Corruption Once Again Surfaces in Sichuan Earthquake
May 28th, 2009
Submitted by: Ashley Breneman
The months leading up to the Olympic games in Beijing proved to be more problematic for the government than most of us were aware. Pollution was just one of the issues that the government had to face and fix before the Olympics began in August. While preparing for the arrival of millions of foreigners, the government was simultaneously trying to quietly deal with the aftermath of the May 12th earthquake in the Sichuan Province of China.
The earthquake, which was registered at 7.9 on the Richter magnitude scale, killed over 87,000 people. The initial response of the government was highly commended as they mobilized over 146,000 troops in just a matter of days. This quickly changed after the alarming announcement of the number of schools that were crumbled during the earthquake, causing a large number of the casualties to be children.
Thousands of parents accused local officials of cutting corners when building the schools since nearby buildings had minimal damage compared to the flattened schools. These schoolhouses have since been called “tofu-dregs schoolhouses” which mocks both the quality and quantity of the many poorly built schools that killed so many children the day of the quake. The central government estimates that over 7,000 inadequately engineered schoolrooms collapsed during the earthquake.
At first glance, it seems extremely immoral and irresponsible that the government would approve of buildings that were not built to withstand a large earthquake. With the standards that govern the design of buildings in the United States, an accident of this magnitude would never occur today. However, there is one big difference between the US and China- the size of the population. When constructing these buildings, the government had to decide between constructing highly sturdy buildings and educating the majority of the population. They chose to educate as many as possible and hope that a “once in a lifetime” earthquake would never occur. So did they do the right thing? What would you have done if you had to make the same decision?
Regardless of the decisions made to construct the building, the real controversy lies in the reaction of the government following the earthquake. Many officials promised to get to the bottom of the crisis and figure out who was to blame. This is when the commonly talked about “government corruption” stepped in. As the victims’ parents and news reporters continually demanded an answer of who was to blame, they were one-by-one harassed or detained by government officials. I can’t say that I have an answer for how the government should respond, but silencing many heartbroken families will likely lead to more and more demonstrations against the government. Instead of hushing the many mourning families, the government should find a way to address their concerns and prevent a tragedy like this from occurring again in the future.
To read more about the Sichuan Province earthquake, see the following articles:
1. In Year After Quake, China Sealed an Opened Door
Entry Filed under: Pre-Departure, Beijing, China
5 Comments Add your own
1. David McKinnon | May 29th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
Great question. How should the government use its budgeted money? Quantity or quality? The first article mentioned that Chinese corporations donated over $1 billion toward relief, and many private donors made additional donations. Hopefully this can serve as an example to introduce or emphasize to the people of china the idea of philanthropy. What if these companies had donated the $1 billion toward the original construction of the schools before the earthquake? Maybe the damage would have been less and more lives saved? Hopefully as more and more people in China climb the economic ladder they can find ways to give back to the community. You also mentioned that the government really didn’t expect an earthquake. Maybe next time when the government does its expected-value risk analysis (like we learned in Dr. Jaggia’s class) they will be a little more liberal on the probabilities.
2. Matt Eves | May 30th, 2009 at 10:06 am
This post reminds me a lot of the book I’m reading for my Spring Book Review titled: Will The Boat Sink the Water? The book is a telling of the last 50 years of Chinese history from the perspective of rural peasants who are so often silenced by corrupt government officials. In the NY Times article referenced above it states: “Most parents acknowledge that they accepted payments from the government that require them to stay silent on the matter.” There are many accounts of similar behavior in the book I’m reading. I’m not sure how I would respond to such a crisis, and know it would be difficult to deal with these tragedies but agree with Ashley that the government should find a way to address the concerns of the people or else a seemingly impossible event may soon repeat itself.
In our Ethics course we have studied the well known Ford Pinto Case that resulted in the death of a mother and severe injury of the young boy passenger. The way that Ford chose to deal with this issue played a huge part in their reputation and consumer trust.
In the Sichuan Earthquake - 87,000 people were killed, a tragedy I truly cannot imagine to witness. The response of the government should involve every measure possible to protect the lives of future Chinese citizens.
3. Andrea Muntzel | May 31st, 2009 at 4:09 pm
I was also surprised at how quiet the Sichuan earthquake was kept. I came across it when I was researching one of the companies we’re visiting in China. Carrefour is an international retail chain from France that donated about 2,000,000 RMB to the earthquake relief. When I read this information, I actually had to look up what earthquake the article was talking about. I have come to two conclusions about this. The first is that I am in a world-event bubble here in San Luis Obispo. The second is that a tragedy of this kind is nearly impossible to miss unless you live under a rock or unless it is extremely downplayed by the media. As Ashley mentioned in her post, the latter seems to be pretty accurate. It makes sense since the Olympics were going to be in Beijing; a world panic about the safety of Chinese architecture wouldn’t have been the best press for an already controversial situation. It makes me wonder, though, whether the earthquake would have been kept quiet without the Olympics being in China. If so, it seems to be an admonition of guilt by the government. From my experience, when people try to hide facts, it’s generally because the truth is unpleasant and undesirable. The fact that the government is trying to pay off parents to keep quiet is another bad sign.
In accordance with the old adage, a picture speaks a thousand words. The picture in the “Loss, Mourning, and Hope Amid the Rubble” article was so telling. The anguish on those women’s faces after losing their child is just unthinkable. In my opinion, regulations are there for a reason and when it comes to losing your child, everyone involved in the situation is fair game to blame. Further, you have to wonder who is telling the media that the government had to choose between building enough schools, or building the schoolhouses to regulations. Since when has China been strapped for cash? To give them the benefit of the doubt, though, I’m not sure how the national budgeting works so maybe local governments are on their own.
Either way, to continue with Matt’s connection to our Ethics course, transparency is one of the key tenets of good governance. I’m not saying our own government has room to talk, but the Chinese government will eventually need to become more transparent in its dealings with citizens. In my opinion, people generally just want the truth. If you admit you made a mistake, people are willing to forgive. Let them blame somebody, let them mourn, and let them move on.
4. Josh Hickman | June 12th, 2009 at 11:14 am
This is all so very sad. Obliviously mother nature has its was of destruction, but you bring up a good point about how the government should be taking responsibility to make sure something like this does not happen again. It should be the duty of the government to protect its people from danger and by having stricter regulations on building codes could be a good start. There are so many things that U.S builders have to abide by nowadays including structural testing (specifically in California earthquake zones), environmental impact reports, now laws regulating energy usage and the movement toward LEED. It reminds me of a previous post where China has been so busy and focused on development for the influx of people coming into major cities, that they have forgotten on small details like these. Dr. Carr’s example in his presentation of how an apartment building has a couple thousand non efficient individual air conditioners hanging out of windows because they did not take the time to design and build a proper VAC system. The details of these lax regulations have taken a toll on the environment and will affect the people living there. When it comes to a small amount of money to fix schools that are falling apart and unsafe for innocent children, it seems that the government needs to refocus on some of its main priorities.
5. Justin Miller | June 13th, 2009 at 6:20 am
A lot of good points were made in the comments. First of all I agree with everyone else that this was a horrible tragedy that’s death toll should have been a lot lower. The fact that one of the main victims was children is unacceptable. I think a government has a certain responsibility to its people, and it definitely failed them. Obviously I’m sure the government never planned on having this big of a problem, but once again corruption causes major problems. It would be interesting to see how much lower the death toll would have been if the schools had been built the way they were originally planned, instead of featuring shady workmanship that paid bribes. I also wonder if the people who took the bribes feel any responsibility for their actions? How much money does it take to not feel bad about risking the lives of children? Ultimately China needs to realize how much of an impact corruption can have when situations like this occur. I recently was doing some research on the Three Gorges Dam, and there is a lot of speculation that there may be some shoddy workmanship and bribes on that project as well. Hopefully this isn’t true, because if that damn breaks during and earthquake, millions will die. Finally, I know they were different kinds of events, but think of the amount of international coverage that was paid to September 11th, and the amount of coverage paid to the earthquake. Over 30 times more people died in the earthquake.
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