Another eye-opening incident happened during the earthquake relief work in the Sichuan area.
(translation from here, here and other Chinese reports)
On Thursday, thousands of quake victims surrounded a store in Luojiang county, Deyang, Sichuan, chanting anti-corruption slogans and questioning if someone have shipped relief materials to this store to sell for profits. Later, ralliers marched to the local police station for being suspiciously involved in protecting the store owner and/or their affiliates. A large number of cops and officials tried to explain to the people, only found themselves mistrusted and attacked by the angry demonstrators. Both sides have people being injured, among them a vice chief of the local police station. One police cruiser was smashed.
On Friday (23rd), Li Chengyun (李成雲), deputy premier of the Sichuan province, held an urgent press conference vowing the authority would "seriously punish" those responsible for stealing and selling relief materials.
"We might bear some of your corruption during peace time, but in a situation like this? We cannot condone your actions," said the angry demonstrators.
Reporters from state-owned media raised difficult questions to Li, who promised a quick answer would be offered to the public as soon as it was available.
"We also hope the media could beef up supervision on situations like these," Li said.
The central government was highly concerned by the corruption news and demanded swift investigation and enhanced security and monitoring of releasing relief materials.
One day later, a suspect was arrested. He was a manager with the Luojiang militia soldier training centre, who was responsible for delivering relief materials to militia soldiers working and distributing materials to victims in Mianzhu. It was said that enroute to Mianzhu, he made a trip to his home and dropped off some materials. These materials were later brought to his girlfriend's store for sale.
His action was witnessed and the news was put up on the internet, which, as a result, brought thousands of people onto the streets demanding corruption be stopped at this tragic time.
The mega quake has not only united Chinese inside and outside of China, but also produced an open atmosphere that invites supervision of the government by both the people and the media (regardless if they are state-owned or not). I would boldly suggest this could be the beginning of a new wave of Chinese consciousness awakening to the power and rights of the people.
China's future version of democracy might be very different from the experiences of other countries, where democratic belief was born out of a middle-class consciousness for self governance. In China, the middle class is the biggest beneficiaries of the open door policy, their urge and call for greater autonomy might not be as huge as those living in villages and the interior. Well, but that's just my guess.
In the case above, I was surprised to see an official asking the media to monitor the government.
I have been thinking these days that Beijing's quick response to the earthquake relief effort underlines once again the stark difference in attitudes and interests between the central and local governments. Just like the last thousands of years, China has never developed a political system that worked to close the gap of conflicting interests between the central and local governments. Take the Tibet riot in March for example, it was the local officials who were keener than anyone else, including their bosses in Beijing, to launch a crack down against any dissidents and to use harsh words in propaganda against the demonstrators. The corrupted local officials are the ones who have benefited the most from opening up the economy. I read that some developers who didn't have connections with local Tibetan officials were asked to pay bribes of 2 million yuan right at the time they submitted a development plan (not to say the subsequent buyings if the plan was approved to go ahead). It was exactly the situation during SARS, where Beijing was not given full details by local officials of the real situation.
In both cases, Beijing might genuinely want to present a more open China to the world, but it has to cover up for the locals who have already made the damage. This is a very "Chinese" thing (like parents have no choice but to protect their children in the face of others even thought they might know too well that it was their children who have committed bad deeds). I bet this could contribute to some degree the background to such a swift takeover of all relief work by Beijing at the early minutes immediately after the Sichuan quake. Should the relief work be handled by the provincial officials at the beginning, we'd have a huge difference in the outcome of an earthquake relief.
