Here are a few thoughts on the recent Wenchuan earthquake from the blogs of various foreign correspondents.
Bill Powell at Time magazine’s China blog wonders if the earthquake caused any damage to the Three Gorges Dam located 660 kilomters east of Chengdu.
Melinda Liu, blogging for Newsweek, addressees how the earthquake might be interpreted by superstitious Chinese:
Many Asians see major calamities as examples of “divine intervention” — such as the recent Burmese cyclone which many citizens there interpreted as karmic payback for the military junta’s bloody crackdown on monk-led protests back in September. My piece mentioned China’s traumatic July 1976 Tangshan earthquake, in which up to 600,000 died.
The Tangshan quake, which took place in July of that year, was widely perceived as a portent that the ailing dictator Mao Zedong would die (he did in September) and that the Maoist era of isolationist rule would end (it did beginning in October, when the ultra-leftist “Gang of Four” was toppled). So many big political events took place in 1976 that Chinese called it the “year of curses.” With all the drama over China’s Olympic torch relay, and anticipation growing over the August Games, authorities no doubt hope today’s earthquake will prove to be just a seismological blip.
Richard Spencer, of the Telegraph, raises a similar point:
A friend points out that this may be a test of residual feudal superstition in China. The Tangshan earthquake in 1976 was said to be an omen of Mao’s death two months later. This would be a bad year for a repeat, though there are no indications this is anything like on that scale.
Spencer writes that he’s on his way to Chongqing, the closest he could get to Chengdu by plane. Keep checking his blog for updates.
James Fallows, of the Atlantic, has been observing how the quake is being covered on Chinese state television:
… the CCTV-1 news channel is having all-out coverage of the earthquake in Sichuan province. Brief cultural notes:
– The coverage included a long segment of premier Wen Jiabao reading a speech about his deep concern for the people of Sichuan, from aboard an airplane en route to the disaster scene. Background: after the country was paralyzed by unexpected snow storms in February, the leadership was criticized for a Katrina-like slowness in dealing with the problem. Prominent coverage now of the main officials responding immediately to this disaster.
– News channels from Taiwan, which we are watching in alternation with the mainland coverage on CCTV, have extensive video footage from Chengdu, estimates of casualties, etc. So far no on-scene video footage that I’ve seen on CCTV-1, and no casualty figures. (The state news agency, Xinhua, is saying that 7600 people, or more, may have died.) Channel-surfing, we see that the German, Japanese, and Korean networks are also running Chengdu footage. It could have been on CCTV when I wasn’t watching, but it’s certainly not featured. CCTV is mainly running telephone interviews with correspondents in Sichuan and talking-head analyses in the studio. Possible background: controlling coverage within China until being sure exactly how the story should be presented. (Update: just saw a 20-second video clip from Chengdu on CCTV.)
