China's quake aftershock — 5 million homeless
Pastor Dale Morgan
China's quake aftershock — 5 million homeless*
Beijing grapples with a post-emergency emergency of epic proportions
By Kari Huus Reporter NBC
updated 3:15 a.m. PT, Tues., June. 10, 2008
At the relief operations center in China’s mountainous Qingchuan county,
government workers are still in emergency mode nearly a month after the
devastating May 12 earthquake. Powerful aftershocks, heavy rains and
dangerous “quake lakes” keep them from devoting all their attention to
their primary task: getting the county’s residents into tents.
But even as they work to provide temporary shelter, officials are
looking ahead to an even more formidable problem: When the ground stops
shaking and the dust settles, this county alone will have 250,000 people
who will need new homes.
It is not just a question of rebuilding what was here. Some towns lost
not only their buildings but also the land they were standing on and
scarce cropland when landslides hit from both sides, said Xiang Zhichun
a young public affairs worker.
“A lot of crops were buried, polluted and spoiled,” said Xiang. “After
the earthquake there is not enough flat area to live.”
Qingchuan is but one corner of a disaster area roughly the size of
Kentucky. And its population accounts for just a fraction of an
estimated 5.5 million people left homeless by the earthquake. The number
of homes needed may go even higher, suggest some analysts, based on
Beijing’s announcement last week that some 15.5 million people have been
“relocated” because of the quake — a number that the official Xinhua
News Agency published without elaboration.
Officials in Beijing have promised to rebuild the towns and villages
that were destroyed within three years, but they have not yet addressed
some critical questions:
# What will be done with those people whose land has literally disappeared?
# Will towns be rebuilt in areas that clearly are not safe?
# Will residents of villages that were impoverished before the quake be
returned or resettled in cities?
# Will Beijing oversee mass relocations to far-away cities, as some
officials are discussing?
In a country that is still in transition from communism to capitalism —
less than 5 percent of the population has property insurance, for
example — the responsibility for rebuilding falls squarely on the
government. But it is a task of mammoth proportions, even for Beijing,
with its history of megaprojects. And unlike other major projects, there
is little time to plan.
“Part of the problem is the tension between long-term planning and a
temporary solution,” says Oded Shenkar, a business professor at Ohio
State University and author of “The Chinese Century.” “This is part of
the discussion right now. What are you going to do, keep these people in
tents for three years? What are you going to do when the winter comes?”
Scramble to temporary housing
Since the disaster, officials have scrambled to get displaced people
into tents. The government hasn’t released the number of people who
remain without shelter. Xinhua reported that as of June 3, 749,200 tents
had been delivered to the region. Based on government figures released a
week ago, this suggests about 3 million more are needed.
Even before that effort is complete, some cities began building villages
of prefabricated housing units with capacity to house 10,000 to 20,000
people. Beijing has ordered that 1 million such temporary units be
constructed by mid-August.
Even though the pace of building in these sprawling villages is
impressive, it is a tall order to provide even short-term shelter for
millions of homeless. Even upon completion, there will be an urgent need
to start moving people out of these villages, which could otherwise
become overcrowded slums. Up to five family members currently live in
the unheated 10-by-12 units, which do not have individual kitchens. They
share communal bathrooms with their equally crowded neighbors.
In some parts of the earthquake zone, there is no question of rebuilding
at the same site. The town of Beichuan, county seat in an area that had
a population of about 160,000 people, was crushed by landslides and has
been written off as a ghost town. Now, officials are discussing
relocating the town in a neighboring county, suggesting that Beichuan’s
former site should be designated a memorial to the disaster victims.
But the fate of Beichuan residents is generally assumed to be in the
hands of the central government in Beijing, which has overseen relief
and rescue operations.
A whole new city?
Among longer-term solutions being floated is the idea of creating a new
city in a safe location in Sichuan to house populations from riverside
towns that are at risk from earthquake-related landslides and flooding
or are now unbuildable.
You Nuo, a veteran journalist and pundit for the official China Daily,
endorsed the idea in the June 2 edition of the English-language daily,
calling on the National People’s Congress to fund a major redevelopment
outside the danger zone in its next budget. “China should help Sichuan,
much of whose economy is dangerously perched on quake-prone mountains,
build a redevelopment zone in a geologically safer area,” he said.
Beijing is experienced at mass relocation, though it has never moved
this many people this fast. When the government decided in the 1990s to
go ahead with the construction of the Three Gorges Dam despite the
concerns of environmental and human rights advocates — as well as
sporadic citizen protests — it removed about 1.2 million people from the
Yangtze River area.
“It’s one of those things where the negative aspects of the regime may
sometimes turn out to be a blessing of sorts,” said Shenkar, the Ohio
State University professor. “This government is used to relocating
people, sometimes against their will, as (it) did with the Three Gorges.”
Another idea being discussed in official circles is the mass relocation
of Sichuan residents to other parts of China. Xiang, the official in
Qingchuan, said one destination being considered is the coastal port
city of Ningbo, which is at least 1,000 miles from the terraced
mountains of Sichuan.
“Ningbo is relatively developed,” Xiang said, adding that the idea is
only preliminary.
There would be cultural challenges to such a mass resettlement. Many
farmers in Sichuan, for example, do not speak the same dialect as the
people in Ningbo. And while China has not formally prevented the
migration of rural people to the city, many migrants working in cities
don't have access to benefits enjoyed by urban residents, such as health
care and free education for their children.
Quake comes amid drift to cities
On the other hand, millions of young people and bread winners from
Sichuan were already working outside the province before the earthquake,
supporting families back home. In more prosperous urban areas of China,
they work in child care, construction, restaurants and prostitution in
order to send money to their children and elderly parents.
As a long term solution to rural poverty, the government supports the
drift of the population from rural areas to cities. So in this sense,
the earthquake comes at a pivotal moment.
“They are in the midst of this transition that other countries saw 100
years ago,” Shenkar said. “Will the government ride on that trend? …
Many of these families (in Sichuan) are neither here nor there anyway.”
Although Beijing will be in charge of the master plan for resettlement —
including decisions such as where electricity and water will be provided
— it is increasingly clear that the views of the victims will have to be
considered. And not all are eager to move.
Yan Runqi, a former resident of the now devastated town of Yingxiu, at
the quake’s epicenter, said he plans to rebuild right where his house
once stood. His wife survived the earthquake too, after jumping out of a
window to avoid being crushed by her collapsing house. He’s not waiting
for a geological survey to determine whether it is safe.
“We’re not afraid,” Yan said, speaking at a relief staging area near
Yingxiu. “I’m almost 60, so I want to see my hometown rebuilt. That
would make me happy.”
Others in the Yingxiu area said they would like to return to their
mountainside farms, but had doubts that the government would reconnect
electricity and water for their tiny clusters of homes.
Still others assumed they would have to go elsewhere.
Wang Yuchang, a 70-year-old evacuee, fled his village in the mountains,
where he used to farm potatoes, corn and wheat. Now he lives in a blue
relief tent in Guanzhuang, a village in the lowlands of Qingchuan county.
“It’s impossible to go back,” he said of the land that had been worked
by his family for at least six generations. "There are no fields, and
the road was destroyed.”
Asked where he thought he and his 11-member family would end up, Wang
said he had no idea. “The government hasn’t made a decision,” he said.
“But we want to stay together.”