BEIJING GIVES BLOOD TO NEIGHBOURING VICTIMS

2008-05-19 14:02:34 [ Big Normal Small ]  Mark Berthold  　Comment

On 2.28pm on 12 May 2008 South West China’ Sichuan province was rocked by a massive earthquake-now rated as a staggering 8.00 of the Richter scale. This makes it even more powerful than the calamitous Tangshan quake in 1976 which registered 7.8. China-this most passionate of countries, although usually discreetly-is now in national mourning, marked by the lowering to half-mast of national flags and the observance of three minutes silence for the three days one week after the quake. This official response shows just how much China has moved on since in the last thirty years. Only in the last few years have the local media been permitted to provide unrestricted coverage to Chinese natural disasters. The Tangshan official death toll of 240,000 was released years later. In earlier times Chinese emperors would be concerned that a natural disaster may indicate the loss of the emperor’s “mandate of heaven”. That thinking has disappeared as it is now recognised that natural disasters are, indeed, just that: regrettably regular natural occurrences from which no country is safe. Indeed, the online encyclopeia wikipedia’s coverage is now again available in China: www.wikipedia.org/wki/2008_Sichuan_earthquake

This greater transparency and open reporting of natural disasters is now recognised in China as essential in rallying national and international aid efforts. With millions homeless and almost a million injured these people need support long after this tragedy leaves the international front pages. The quake provides potent proof of this awareness. Saturation news coverage on Chinese television continues unabated a week later. Prominently featured are Chinese leaders visiting the stricken areas with promises of support and encouragement backed up with large scale and well-organised relief teams. The result: already Chinese have contributed over one billion dollars-about ten times that of international aid to date, although that too has been invaluable in shoring up local faith in those abroad: (www.crfc.org.cn/en/index.asp is slow to download, suggesting overloading). China has also summoned international assistance with special expertise, such as Japanese sniffer-dog teams from that quake prone neighbour. This is in stark contrast to a neighbouring country recently ravaged by a typhoon. But of course some essentials just cannot be bought. Blood, for instance. So in Beijing, where I live, blood donor buses quickly appeared in city squares. This donor administrator is informing the waiting lines of procedures.



China is watching. Here in Xidan these donors complete the paperwork beneath the official Olympic logo of this star-crossed Chinese capital.



Just a few blocks away in Wanfujing shopping mall-Beijing’s prestige shopping hub-two donation sites are operating just a couple of hundred blocks apart. Beijing’s fifteen million residents include many from elsewhere in China. Although the quake was barely perceptible in Beijing, it is not inconceivable that one of these patient donors will be giving blood unwittingly destined for a relative or friend in their original hometown. But it will be sufficient for them that they are giving to their fellow-Chinese. This country of 1.3 billion possesses an amazing sense of solidarity which for the most part is inattentive to regional distinctions. While they wait they can watch the coverage on the large wall-side screen in this increasingly wired world.
Copyright mark berthold 2008

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