ninme

Telegraph - China shows a human face with earthquake rescue mission By Con Coughlin

Far from being a member of the remote and autocratic regime that is normally portrayed as governing the world’s most populous country, Wen Jiabao, China’s personable prime minister, has appeared repeatedly on television lending comfort and support to the survivors, making sure, as Caroline Flint might say, that Beijing is seen to be on the people’s side.

The efficiency with which the rulers have responded to the massive destruction has been impressive. The 50,000 troops dispatched to Wenchuan, the earthquake’s epicentre, have made an immediate impact in helping to rescue trapped survivors and distributing vital food and medical supplies. The operation has been well-managed, with airports closed to civilian traffic so as not to impede relief flights. Television bulletins broadcast appeals for blood donations, and priority has been given to restoring electricity and clearing roads.

Compare the professionalism of the operation with the way the United States, the world’s other superpower, responded to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which killed fewer than 1,000 people but fatally wounded President George W. Bush’s reputation for administrative competence.

…This is the acceptable face of China, far removed from the image of a country that has the world’s highest execution rate and imprisons anyone who expresses the slightest criticism of the communist regime.

Emphases, ah, mine.

Update:

I don’t mean to say that I think accounts of the Chinese response are all lies. I’m not even sure that I mean that ours is to be considered the “Free Press”. Here’s a picture of kindergarden children putting money in a basket for earthquake victims. Schools and communities across the country here were doing the same thing, but they would never get their picture taken because we’re all a bunch of racists. The Coast Guard, despite having its stations and the homes of its crews wiped out, still mounted its biggest rescue operation ever, but if they ever got their pictures taken, it was only because they had some poor elderly black woman in a sling who’d been left behind because we’re all a bunch of racists. I didn’t see a lot of these pictures. All the stories so far have been about the President being on the ground, and the military response being on the ground and the unbearable grief and the miracle stories and all the rest of it, the sorts of emotional archs you expect to read about after a disaster like this. After Katrina it was just anger and revenge. And rumours and conspiracies. You think there aren’t rumours and conspiracies running around Sichuan Province right now? But the press that’s there is there to do something more important than report on a bunch of rumours and conspiracies when there’s REAL NEWS going on.

And this turned into a rant. Bah.