World

Obviously, the earthquake in Sichuan has dominated news coverage and the blogosphere since it happened Monday. A couple of events shouldn’t pass without being noted. Inflation hit 8.5 per cent last month, the government announced. This is bad and only going to get worse and is a very serious challenge for Beijing, as we’ve written …

There’s been some discussion in the comments about the relatively paltry contribution made by the U.S. government and wondering about donations by companies and individuals. The ever-insightful Tim Johnson of McClatchy Newspapers has a list for anyone interested on his blog, China Rises (proxy needed in China) of the substantial amounts …

Yesterday we traveled to several more Sichuan towns that were hit hard by Monday’s earthquake. Here’s the story we put together and also a photo essay.

Just a brief follow-up to my previous post on Dujiangyan. Xinhua News Agency is now reporting that serious cracks have been found in a dam upstream of the earthquake ravaged city. It’s hard to imagine a place less capable of sustaining floodwaters right now.

Here’s our latest piece on the town of Dujiangyan, one of the cities hit by Monday’s earthquake in Sichuan. My colleague Lin Yang and I visited there yesterday and returned again today. It’s hard to pin …

As the death toll rises to 20,000 or more, more focus will inevitably come to the quality of construction in the towns and villages in rural Sichuan. One of the things that the world is being reminded of in this disaster—and the United States, in particular, needs to be reminded of this– is that China is still a very poor country, …

A good number of people responded to the previous post with alternative ways of contributing money, including by Pay Pal and through outfits other than the Red Cross. Rather than reproduce it all here, I’d direct anyone interested in donating to the comments section of the previous post, which features a number of useful links and …

Reader Nianqingri suggests posting information about how to donate. This comes courtesy of the shanghaiist website:

“For those who are looking to contribute to current aid efforts underway, you can now donate money to the Red Cross Society of China which has formed a disaster relief working group to be dispatched to the

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I spent some time in the region where the earthquake hit worst last year on a story about pandas (the main panda breeding and research center at Wolong is near the epicenter) and fear that the casualty figures are bound to rise quite a bit. It’s a region of steep mountains bisected by narrow valleys which suffer from landslides even in …

A reader in response to a previous post quite rightly raises the (terrible) prospect of damage to Three Gorges Dam, the monumental hydroelectric project located in western Hubei province,about 660 kilometres east of Chengdu. Thus far, both Xinhua and Reuters reports (out of Chengdu) are saying that there is no evidence as yet of any …

At least two chemical plants in the city of Shifang in Sichuan province have been destroyed in the quake. Hundreds are buried in the rubble at both sites. And —ominously?— from at least one of the plants liquid ammonia has been released into the atmosphere because of the destruction, according to Xinhua.net. The overall death toll, …

Remember that the Kobe earthquake in 1995 registered 7.2, and killed 5100 people. The urban infrastructure there, I’d wager, even in 1995, was vastly more “earthquake proof” than the buildings, highways etc. in Chengdu. US geological survey, according to its website, saying this was a 7.8 But the epicenter is about 90 to 100 kilometers …

It’s early days yet but it looks as though the damage from the Sichuan earthquake that hit this afternoon isn’t too bad. (Later note: numbers are rising as they always do. I guess I was being optimistic, a triumph of hope over experience: I recall the first reports out of Aceh only had a few dozen dead) The size of the quake and the fact …