People Power
Spurred by new openness in the Chinese media, local community networks are springing up to help survivors of the quake.
Cao has had a rough week and is losing his voice, which rasps from shouting into his mobile phone. As we talk outside Deyang city hospital, he taps a water bottle against his knee and takes constant calls. It's 6:30 p.m. and the DEC Group marketing executive hasn't eaten since breakfast, but thanks to his incessant calling, some 1,500 homeless workers from the Dongfang Turbine Factory now have food and shelter. "Most [of them] have nothing, just clothes and no money," he says.
Cao, a tall, wiry man in his 50s, is part of DEC Group's senior management team. He doesn't want to give his full name as he has not sought permission to talk to us, but he is willing to discuss the earthquake's terrible aftermath. When the quake hit last Monday, it demolished not only some of the Dongfang Turbine Factory works (designed to withstand a 7.0 quake) but also the factory's primary, middle, and technical training schools in the Sichuan mountain town of Hanwang.
Cao wasn't in Hanwang at the time. I first saw him at the Beijing airport the morning after the quake, yelling into his phone as we waited for the airport in Chengdu to reopen, about 50 miles from Hanwang. "I've got a ticket but I can't fly … Put all your work down and try to go back. We have to work," he yelled. Around him on airport bucket chairs, passengers watched him obliquely, their faces swollen with pity. "Everything's very messed up," he told me then. His family was unhurt, but he knew of other losses, including a friend's daughter who'd had both her legs amputated. "The company directors and local government are all at the site trying to save people … The situation is very serious," he said.
Two days later I met up with Cao again, this time in Sichuan. In that time he had fixed up a tent city and warehouse accommodation for Dongfang Turbine's worker refugees by using local government aid and commandeering sites from other units of DEC Group in nearby Deyang city. The tent—really tarpaulins spread over scaffolding—is 500 yards long and open-fronted. Situated outside the warehouse gates, it offers no privacy and little shelter from the rainy season, which is just starting. But in many ways this tent is a symbol, an emblem that underscores a wave of citizen activism gripping Sichuan as quake survivors try to rush life-saving necessities to those who have lost even more.
The homeless here are cared for by a network of 200 volunteers who bring daily food and other basics. Many are DEC workers from sister companies, but others are high school and college students. "They come from all parts of society," says Cao. "None of these people knew each other, and I didn't know any of them," he adds, grinning at a group ladling out soup and rice from a white van.
Similar impromptu community networks are springing up throughout the disaster zone to supplement the government's relief efforts. Long before web 2.0, Chinese people kept in touch with a slew of home town, school and work buddies to help smooth the way to personal goals in this connections-driven society. Those private networks are now pouring aid into the quake zones, taking public action in ways that would be politically risky in more normal times. On the expressway outside Deyang we met a convoy of 200 migrant workers who've banded together to head back to their Sichuan villages from factory jobs on the east coast. "We're going to check on our families first … then join the rescue operation," said Wang Gang. They had called the local government, which had provided buses.
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Member Comments
Posted By: Tian Qingyou @ 05/27/2008 11:51:10 PM
Comment: Posted By: Tian Qingyou @ 05/27/2008 6:29:29 AM
Comment: NOw when looking back the Tiananmen Square Incident in1989, I think most Chinese would regard what the government did was correct in the incident that was quite magnified by the western medias that tend to make sensational stories so as to attract eyeballs. Without the what the west- called 'the supression" China would have been in turmoil and there wouldn't have been the succeeding big-stride economic development in the country. We should own that one good thing derived from the Incident; the party and the government were alerted on corruption and the dangers facing them. They found the right track, learned the lesson,corrected the mistaks and moved forward. After all, we should attribute what we have achieved to the snap decision on the Incident by the central government. Without the move China could have been splitted, which is what the west is eager to see just as the split of Soviet Union. Not long ago trying to split Tibet was directed and piece by piece cut- away from China is all the west intend to do. The present younger generation is maturer than that of 1980s' that tended to follow the west blindly. They are more critical on what
they see instead of being care-free. These youngsters are nick-named Post-80s(refer to their birth after1980) that are the hope of China's tomorrow. Most of the people at the forefront of the quake relief and rescue work in sichuan are them, the new rising stars.
Posted By: Tian Qingyou @ 05/25/2008 12:10:02 AM
Comment: Posted By: Tian Qingyou @ 05/24/2008 8:26:59 AM
Comment: The Chinese government has led its people in building its country into such strong,powerful and prosperous one only within 30 years and lifting millions of people out of poverty. Can any corrupted government make such a great achievement? Do you know why the communst government has survived nearly 60 years and is still very popular among most of Chinese people? The answer is 'Clean'. If it had been corrupted and not popular, it would have been overthrown by the people long long ago. If you take 1/5 of the total population of the world to feed into account and they are fed well, what else can you complain? If our government is not the best, it must be among the best.
Posted By: Tian Qingyou @ 05/24/2008 7:50:18 AM
Comment: I'd like to add something to what I wrote above as far as the Chinese government is concerned. I don't think Chinese people changed the way they see their leaders. I hold most Chinese always see their leaders the same way; trustable and dependable. In terms of corruption, we should first of all distinguish the goverment from the corrupted government officials. They are not the same. The government never disowns there are corruptions as any where else in the government. But the corrupted officials are constantly exposed and delt with severe punishment as it's well seen the punished ranking from county level up to the plitical-buro level of the central government. It is not deniable that wherever there are disaster there are PLA sent by the government. Around half of the army are communist members and they are always at the forefront of any danger and disaster.
Posted By: Tian Qingyou @ 05/24/2008 7:08:52 AM
Comment: Well, in fact, in times of disasterChinese leaders have always acted as what they have been doing during this earthquake in Sichuan,China. The city of Tianjin where my home is also experienced a strong quake in 1976 during which 20000 people were killed in the city alone to say nothing of 200000 death tolls in the epicentre of the earthquake in Tangshan. The only difference between the two quakes is that the present one is being publicised while the quake rescue and relief work in 1976 was done in somewhat a closed envirnoment and unknown to the outside world. As a young boy at that period of time I knew the government did what it could,sending no fewer than 2000000 troops to the striken area and helping with the rescue work.because at the time of cultural revolution people believed more of self-reliance and hard-struggle.
Posted By: Tian Qingyou @ 05/24/2008 8:57:06 AM
Comment: Pls don't draw a line between us people and the government!! We are in one mind. Most of the PLA are communist party members and always put the people's interests above anything else.