I thought you might like to hear some first hand comments on the recent earthquake in China’s Sichuan Province.
 
I went to Chengdu on Sunday to meet the Red Cross to sign a partnership agreement between my NGO, Dorje Association, to build rural medical clinics in Sichuan Province. Chengdu is the capital of Sichuan and about 70 kilometers from the epicenter of Monday’s earthquake. You can see an excellent map of the quake’s impact here:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/05/12/world/05132008_CHINA_MAP.html .
 
At the time the quake hit, I was with meeting with the director of the Sichuan Red Cross and her senior staff. The building shook, the walls cracked and plaster fell from the ceiling. Most of the Red Cross staff ran outside. Not wanting to get injured by falling debris, three of us stood in the office doorway, which I could see was a thick load-bearing wall and structurally the safest place to be. Once the initial tremor subsided, we went outside to wait for the aftershock. After it hit a few minutes later, the director and her senior managers jumped in a car to meet with the government to prepare the disaster relief. The rest of the staff milled around outside the building waiting.
 
After almost 2 hours, my colleagues and I decided to go to a nearby monastery. The streets were crowded with people camping out. The atmosphere was relatively quiet (for China) and calm. People played cards, talked or were quietly waiting for the next big tremor. The monastery was very peaceful, not many people there. We sat in a small teahouse inside, chatting with other people, listening to the monks chanting and to the news on the radio. Those people who lived above the 7th floor reported having everything on their walls thrown to the floor, including bookcases and air-conditioning units.
 
The government advised everyone to prepare for a major aftershock between 10 pm and 12 am. When it didn’t happen, the radio advised everyone to go home. I left the monastery at 2 am and walked back to my hotel. The park and sidewalks had cleared considerably, with just a few groups of people spending the night outdoors, many sleeping on the sidewalks (see photos).
 
At 4 am there was another large aftershock which woke me from my sleep, but as soon as it hit it was over, same for another at 7 am. From 9 am we were back at the Red Cross, in the office of the person responsible for receiving donations. Her mobile phone and desk phone never stopped ringing, and representatives various relief groups came in and out. The floor below was where the actual disaster relief team was located, and was buzzing with activity, phones ringing and people talking loudly.
 
In the early afternoon, the director came in, still wearing the clothes she had on from our meeting the previous day. She hadn’t slept all night and had just come back from the quake’s epicenter at Dujiayan. Like the other senior managers at the Red Cross, she was incredibly polite, apologizing repeatedly for not being able to attend to us because she was so busy with the relief effort. In the midst of all that activity, we negotiated the rest of the contract and got it signed.
 
From my vantage point at one of the centers of the relief effort, I have to say that the government’s response has been very impressive. Within hours, thousands of army troops had streamed into the area and were digging people out. Medical stations were set up in many of the worst hit areas and were taking care of everyone who was hurt. Premier Wen Jiabao was at the epicenter within 8 hours after the quake hit and was still there on Wednesday when I left to go back to Beijing. Watching the news, the teams on the ground were working non-stop to extricate everyone they could from fallen buildings. Ambulances ran back and forth throughout the night, ferrying the worst injured to hospitals in Chengdu.
 
I spoke to a friend who was volunteering at one of the major hospitals in Chengdu. She said that the flow of ambulances had tapered off by Tuesday afternoon, most of the injured people having already been evacuated. Public phones at airports and train stations are free right now so that people can call home to let loved ones know they were safe. Reportedly, long distance calls from mobile phones in Chengdu are also free. Highway tollbooths in the area are closed to speed the passage of vehicles. As my plane taxied down the runway, we passed two huge planes carrying medical personnel and another cargo plane disgorging fresh army troops. The Wednesday morning news reported over 200 trains carrying rescue troops, medicines and supplies were due to arrive within the next 24 hours. More than 100 rescue troops had been helicoptered into the last few areas that were completely inaccessible by road due to landslides. As I said, the effort is very impressive. I think that the US can learn a lot from China, especially after the fiasco that followed Katrina.
 
I should say though that the average person in Chengdu was still very nervous on Tuesday. My colleague went back to the monastery and said it looked like a refugee camp, with people camped out in every nook and cranny. When the last major quakes hit China in the 1970’s, people moved out of the cities into rural areas for 2-3 months, not knowing what would happen next. This time the response will likely be less extreme, but the mind of the common person is still adjusting. I personally think this event and the government’s strong pro-active response will have a galvanizing affect on the public mindset, pulling the country closer together. Added to the strong national pride surrounding the Olympics, and if properly managed, this has the potential to greatly benefit the country over the long term.
 
It’s easy for the western media to bash China, but I see a real effort here to improve. The current national leadership is fully aware of the problems China faces and has been making great strides to address them. International pressure does help, and so does internal pressure from its own citizens. The hardest part of change here is to make it happen at the local level where vested interests are so entrenched. Many say that the rate of change is too slow, but in the 7 years that I’ve been here, it’s been nothing short of remarkable.

About the Red Cross, in China its mission is the same as everywhere else and is taken very seriously by the government. There is a Red Cross representative in every health department office in China, ensuring that the organization’s efforts are fully integrated with the health department’s. Dorje’s partnership with them gives us instant credibility and a strong partner in a country where strong partnerships are paramount to long term success.

On Monday, prior to the earthquake when we were talking casually, the director and her managers were talking about the situation in Myanmar. Perhaps bowing to international pressure, the government there had just allowed the China, Macao and Hong Kong Red Cross into the country to aid their relief efforts. I haven’t seen this mentioned in the news yet. In China, the government was telling foreign aid agencies to make donations but not come in. Unlike Myanmar, I believe that China’s reasons are because it already has the infrastructure in place and can really do this on its own. That’s not to say that foreign aid agencies are not on the ground helping with the earthquake response. I met the China director of Heart to Heart at the Red Cross office on Tuesday. They have been working alongside the government in China for more than 10 years.

James