Vol. 72/No. 22      June 2, 2008

The Chinese government has so far confirmed more than 40,000 dead, 32,000 missing, and 247,000 injured. An estimated 4.8 million people have been left homeless.

More than 250,000 people died the last time an earthquake of a similar magnitude occurred in China. The inadequate response of the Chinese government following that 1976 quake in Tangshan, which included refusing international food aid and help with the rescue effort, increased the number of unnecessary casualties.

Since the 1976 earthquake, the government has enacted stricter construction standards. However, reports of the damage from the current earthquake disaster reveal that many buildings collapsed because they were not built or upgraded to these codes.

Working-class dwellings and schools were the hardest hit. A higher percentage of buildings collapsed in smaller towns and rural areas than in large cities. According to Chinese engineers quoted in the press, building code violations are particularly common in these more rural areas.

Residents of Mianzhu, who were searching for relatives in a fallen apartment complex, told The Independent that the buildings had been built in a substandard manner because corrupt government officials had siphoned off so much in kickbacks during the construction. “Show me the structural steel in that building,” said one woman whose mother was trapped under debris. “It all went into some official’s pocket.” Buildings surrounding the working-class complex remained intact, The Independent reported, “including one which housed cadres from the Communist Party.”

Xinhua, China’s state news agency, estimates 4 million buildings were destroyed, including 6,900 classrooms and school dormitories. The quake occurred at 2:30 p.m., when school was in session. In the city of Mianyang, seven school buildings collapsed, burying 1,700 people.

A school collapse in Dujiangyan buried 900 students. The Fu Xing No. 2 school in the village of Wufu collapsed, killing 300. Nearly all the other buildings in the village remained intact.

“My daughter wasn’t killed by a natural disaster. She and the others were killed by a derelict building,” said Bi Kaiwei, whose 13-year-old daughter was buried under the school in Wufu. “The officials knew it was unsafe.”

Bi and the child’s mother, Lin Xiaoying, are chemical factory workers. Their apartment across the street, built in 1982, was older than the school, but stood undamaged. China’s reactionary “one-child policy,” which prohibits most parents from having more than one child, meant that the couple, like many other working-class parents of victims, lost their only child.

So far, 7,000 aftershocks have occurred in southwest China, increasing fears of further disaster, including landslides and bursting dams. The widespread substandard construction in China mirrors the government’s attitude toward the safety of working people on the job. Health and safety have both been a casualty of the capitalist market methods increasingly applied in the last two decades by China’s privileged government bureaucracy. Deaths from work-related accidents last year totaled nearly 100,000 workers, according to China’s safety agency.  
 
 
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