Devangshu Datta: Learning from disasters

VIEWPOINT

In the case of China, the potential for follow-up disasters is there because there have been aftershocks in an area with many dams and nuclear assets. Also, a lake formed post-quake must be drained. In Burma, multitudes are still at risk in the aftermath due to lack of disaster relief.

Neither government can be classified as democratic. But there has been an eye-opening contrast between the responses of the PRC and the SPDC (as SLORC now calls itself).

The Chinese reacted very quickly and allowed both aid and the foreign media into the area. They have not only allowed public demonstrations (against flimsy school buildings, for example) from angry quake-survivors, the Chinese press has also covered snafus in relief efforts in meticulous detail.

It's been 19 years since Tiananmen Square and the CPC has developed some people skills in the interim. For one thing, it has absorbed Hong Kong, which is an invaluable window into the First World's ways of functioning. It has also multiplied its own GDP something like 6-7 times in those two decades. Thereby, it has created a substantial middle class that can be categorised as "bourgeoisie" and could, perhaps, evolve into the foundations of civil society.

The PRC's regime has now matured enough to allow a certain amount of (carefully moderated) internal debate. It has its blind spots of course