Shaky Improvement
Beijing's senior leadership continues to learn, on the job.
While the causes of individual building failures remain unclear, such complaints underscore widespread concerns about the quality of much of China's infrastructure amid an unparalleled but only patchily supervised national building surge. The criticism is also a potent reminder of the political risks that natural disasters – with their merciless exposure of administrative or societal failings – can pose even to rulers as firmly rooted as China's Communist party.
So far Beijing leaders have appeared well prepared to minimise such risks. Hu Jintao, China's president, and Wen Jiabao, the premier, reacted decisively and very publicly within hours of the quake on Monday. And state-controlled media have kept Mr Wen centre-stage in their coverage from the earthquake zone ever since.
«This is clearly a team that realises they cannot muck around on disaster relief,» says David Zweig, director of the Centre on China's Transnational Relations at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
Mr Wen's calls for local officials to redouble relief efforts have bolstered his man-of-the-people image and attracted online praise for the government, largely drowning out accusations of shoddy school construction and anger that officials failed to forecast the quake.
Victor Shih reports also on "...a quake and disaster relief work headquarters with Comrade Wen Jiabao as the head and Comrades Li Keqiang and Hui Liangyu as the deputy heads to take full charge of the current quake and disaster relief work."
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