All Shook Up

Meanwhile, apart from these civic actors, perhaps China's biggest postquake winners are its top leaders. Surprisingly swift and highly publicized visits to Sichuan, first by Prime Minister Wen Jiabao and then by party head Hu, boosted their popularity—and gave them more political leverage over local authorities who routinely try to evade everything from taxes to environmental protection codes. In the postquake aftermath, 28 Sichuan officials have been sacked for graft or inaccurate casualty counts. In Tuanjie village near Dujiangyan, Party Secretary Liu Dingshuang and his family were caught selling goods from their store—at inflated prices—right after the disaster (though Liu denied any such role). This price gouging enraged Zhang Mingzhi, a neighbor who tipped off party watchdogs. By May 16, Liu had been fired. "Before, our problems were small and we handled them ourselves, without reporting to higher-ups," whistle-blower Zhang said. "But now people really are suffering. I had to do something."

Multiply that sentiment by tens of millions and it spells trouble for cadres caught on the wrong side of public opinion. The quake-zone forays by Wen and Hu are a new measuring stick by which rural officials—long prone to corruption and nepotism—are now being judged. Citizens across Sichuan grumble that village authorities were too slow to comfort victims who'd lost homes and relatives in the disaster. In Luocheng village, near Shifang city, more than nine tenths of the buildings collapsed and 68 of 2,980 residents died. "Yet our local leaders were a rarer sight than Communist Party Chairman Hu Jintao himself!" snorted villager Peng Minggui.

For now, most public anger against crooked bureaucrats is focused on the issue of shoddy building standards—which many parents blame for the collapse of more than 7,000 schoolrooms. "Is this a school, or a tomb?" yelled Mi Wenbing in the rubble of the toppled Luocheng School, where he showed a reporter how weak the mortar was by pulverizing it with his hands. One mother, Wei Qingrong, feels especially aggrieved. Her late father had helped build the school in 1995–96 and she recalls him comparing it to "bean-curd dregs," or doufuzha—a metaphor for flimsy construction. "He said workers should've used 10 bags of cement, but instead they used four [and substituted sand as filler]," she says. "Once he even warned, 'If there's an earthquake, many children will die'." And sure enough, when the big one hit, more than 80 of about 300 students were killed—including Wei's 13-year-old daughter.

The blight isn't confined to flimsy buildings, however—nor to the disaster zone itself. The quake has unleashed a fierce debate over the quality of Chinese schooling, especially among parents who now believe the education system tolerated not only flimsy construction, but substandard—and possibly negligent—instructors as well. Just before the tremors started, for example, several teachers at a lower-class Wuhu Primary School decided to play mah-jongg, so they locked kids in a classroom—leading to numerous deaths. "It's precisely because schooling is free that some teachers are of low character," complained Luocheng father Zhen Shaorong, reflecting the common perspective that topnotch teachers gravitate toward fee-charging private schools. The fact is that China's national primary-education system has been ailing for years. During the '90s, Beijing promised nine years of free mandatory education—but required local authorities to at least partly bankroll school construction and other expenses. Many villages lacked the funds. Luocheng, for example, is a hardscrabble hamlet where garlic farmers plant on average only .02 of a hectare of land each. To make matters worse, in many places local officials and construction bosses took cuts of construction money for themselves, leaving even less cash for proper building.

Across Sichuan, some parents of dead students have banded together in protest against this flawed system, threatening to bring their complaints all the way to the central government. Luocheng villagers said they'll await the results of architectural inspections, which higher-ups promised by late June. "If we're not satisfied, we'll go all the way to Beijing," claims Mi. "I'll use the rest of my life to seek justice for my child." Local discontent is so potentially volatile that for three weeks now, China's media censors have started telling domestic editors to avoid coverage of substandard school construction.

Yet in many ways, the genie is already out of the bottle. Before the calamity, many farmers avoided criticizing local officials for fear of risking their livelihoods, or even their lives. But now some Chinese seem exhilarated to think that the central government may be willing to lend them an ear—a perception encouraged by the government's more transparent flow of information right after the quake. Even on an individual level, citizens are feeling more confident about challenging authority, at least rhetorically, when they believe they're right. Many now seem eager to share their suspicions with the media. Zheng Shaorong eagerly shows a foreign reporter cell-phone photos of hollow walls in the school where his daughter died. Another Luocheng resident, who declines to give his name out of fear of retaliation, recites a list of economic irregularities that he intends to ask authorities about once things calm down. Meanwhile, the rise of volunteerism reflects a strengthening of civil society and of grass-roots associations that transcend provincial frontiers.

As all this suggests, the signs are growing that 2008 will turn out to be a remarkable year of change in China's modern history. Beijing's Olympics preparations may have set the stage, but so far, the Sichuan quake has had the biggest impact on China's national psyche. To be sure, some moves are afoot—especially among state media censors and Internet police—to restore the old status quo. Still, the country has achieved a new high-water mark in terms of the development of civil society, the push for greater government accountability and the accessibility of a party leadership that's reached out to underprivileged masses at home and newfound allies abroad. These experiences will make it easier for Chinese to respond well the next time they face a major crisis—and to seek new opportunities for growth amid the danger.

© 2008