Nearly everyone in the world (outside of China, anyway) has heard of the Tiananmen Square massacre of June 4, 1989, in which unarmed protesters in Beijing were slaughtered by the Peasants Liquidation Army (that's what PLA stands for, right?). Death toll estimates have ranged from a few hundred to a few thousand, with some reports even claiming as many as 10,000 (though the Chinese government's official line is that absolutely no one died except a small number of Chinese troops who were killed by "reactionary puppets of American Imperialism," their official designation for the protesters (Mosher, p. 223)).
The Chinese government's usual tactics of destroying any footage known to exist and then denying the incident ever occured have worked well enough that even some outside of China now believe the Chinese government's "massacre? What massacre?" story (Short, The Guardian), but for the most part, the name "Tiananmen Square" is almost as vivid of a byword for tyranny and brutality as the name "North Korea." What is not so commonly known is that the same government covered up a far bloodier spectacle of death nearly 20 years later, for which they bear just as much responsibility - not through brutality this time, but through negligence: I am speaking of the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake.
Tofu Buildings
At 2:28 PM on May 12, 2018, a magnitude 7.9 Earthquake struck Dujiangyan, Sechuan Province, China (Rafferty & Pletcher, Britannica). The location and timing could not have been more unfortunate. The quake's epicenter was near Yingxiu, Ngawa Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture of Sechuan (Taylor, The Atlantic), where those communities of ethnic non-Han (who are deemed "undesirable" by the entirely-ethnic-Han National People's Congress) live in unmasked second-class citizen status (Mosher, p. 144). While the blame for an earthquake certainly cannot be laid at the feet of the Chinese Party-State, there is no one else who can be blamed for how unprepared the area was.
The quake ripped buildings apart like paper in more than 7,000 schools (Hui Min-Neo, ABS-CBN News), killing thousands within the first few minutes. Safety standards in most earthquake-prone areas call for buildings to be built to withstand a certain level of seismic stress, but construction of buildings in the area was so slipshod that they were frequently referred to as "tofu buildings (Chu, p. 228).“ The explanation for the shoddy construction is simple: corrupt officials skimped on safety standards to save on costs (Chu, 218).
The cost, as it turned out, would be roughly seventy thousand lives (Wong, NYT), though Beijing's official deathtoll is barely more than 5,000 (Rafferty & Pletcher). Between a few hundred (Chu,218, 228, 240, 264) and 5,000 of these (Fenby, 108) were schoolchildren.
Beijing even admitted, albeit under pressure, that faulty construction was to blame for the 70,000 who died, though their excuse was that construction had been rushed out of eagerness to give the poor, underprivileged ethnic minority children a place to study (Wong), as part of Beijing's neverending process of "developing cultural and educational undertakings, extension of scientific knowledge, transforming social traditions and eradicating superstitions" in ethnic autonomous areas (Yin, p. 170), all thanks to the abundant generosity of the State.
State Heroics
Beijing has gone to great lengths to tell the entire world of the heroism the Chinese State (and especially the Party) showed in the aftermath of the quake. The Party-State can be counted on, any time the issue comes up, to pat itself on the back for its unquestionably stellar handling of relief efforts.
"The government is responsive and effective, which is the most significant characteristic of this earthquake relief act. Hu Jintao concluded that the Wenchuan earthquake disaster relief act was an earthquake relief struggle with the fastest rescue, the widest range of mobilization and the biggest input [in history]."
-Pan Guoping & Ma Limin, China's Laws p. 59
Other State-Printed materials even describe the quake with glee, describing how it "provided an opportunity for [wealthy Chinese] to express their benevolence (Tang, Zhang, Wang & Feng, p. 21)," and going on to cite the number of volunteers who came from across China to assist, or the amount of money donated by State-Owned enterprises to the relief effort. What is notable in its absence from ANY of this State-Sponsored self-flattery is the inconvenient fact that the devastation was almost entirely due to the poor construction standards used in the building of these schools. What is even more notable in its absence is any form of apology to the parents and families of those killed in the quake.
Stepped On For Seeing Justice... The Chinese Way
Imagine this situation.
You've just experienced a magnitude 7.9 Earthquake. Your house is badly damaged, but you are alive. As you recover from the shock, you look around your neighborhood and the range of the catastrophe slowly sinks in. Finally, your blood turns to ice as you think of your child, who is at school.
You pick up your cell phone and try to call her at school, but of course the network is busy. Getting to her school won't be easy, as the quake decimated the roads, so you get on a bicycle and furiously pedal the four or five kilometers to get there, blitzing past thousands of other denizens of the crowded little county. When you do, panic sets in. The scene before you is worse than at home.
Nothing remains but rubble. Boulders, sliding from the nearby mountains during the quake, are scattered everywhere amid pieces of barely recognizable debris. Everywhere, schoolchildren are crying, their faces dark gray from dust. Their teachers are struggling to maintain order, along with the few police who did not abandon their posts and run for safety, but amid the sea of faces, you can't pick out your child (nor are you sure you could even recognize her under such dust).
In a panic, you begin screaming out her name, but your voice is lost amid the cacophony of parents arriving with the same questions. Finally, you recognize the face of her homeroom teacher, and you run toward her, pleading for answers, only to find she has few to give.
It's at that moment when a thought you tried to banish from your mind is brought to the forefront by a scream of agony, like a gutted animal. Turning toward the source of the scream, you find a woman collapsed into a heap, tears cascading from her eyes over the crushed and ruined body of her 8-year-old son, pulled from the rubble by a bao an. In a dark, nagging corner of your mind, the black question finally asserts itself: did it happen to my daughter too? A question which, to your dismay, is answered a few days later in the affirmative.
This is the situation in which Zhou Xingrong found herself. Her 15-year-old son, Lu Qianliang, was one of th 5,000 who died in the collapse of the "tofu buildings." Worse than the loss though, was the fact that she has not even been allowed to grieve.
"Dujiangyan may be the city that reacted the hardest to protesters," Zhou said. "I don't know of another place that detained parents of deceased schoolchildren. As far as I know, more than 10 parents of Juyuan Middle School victims were taken into custody, not to mention [parents of children at] Xinjian Primary School [where more than 200 pupils died]."
-Choi Chi-Yuk, South China Morning Post
According to the same source, Zhou was later arrested for attempting to light firecrackers at the site of the disaster on the anniversary (a strange thing to Western ears but a common form of mourning in China). After travelling to Beijing to petition the courts for justice against the officials whose corruption led to the shoddy construction of the schools, she and her husband were both detained in what China calls a "black jail," which is to say 'a jail whose location is not publicly known and whose existence is denied.' Over years, she has been repeatedly detained in such circumstances, apparently any time Beijing authorities suspect she might "cause social unrest" by daring to question the government's official line about the cause of these deaths, and about the State's "heroic" response.
Worse still for Zhou is the fact that she can never have another child. It's difficult to give Western readers a clear perspective on what this assuredness of dying childless means in a society where lineage is everything and leaving an heir is more important than wealth. And yet perhaps more heartbreaking is the account of Shang Guoying, another parent who lost her child when the Tof Buildings collapsed. Though Shang flatly states "the contractors who built the tofu projects are responsible (Choi)," she has been so browbeaten in the pursuit of justice for her child that she has given up. "She no longer petitions, and has moved into Dujiangyan to build a new life," Choi writes. One can only imagine what would compel a parent living in the same society -where having a child is the most important accomplishment in life- to decide that it is not worth going against the so-called "People's Government" for justice for one's child.
To date, not a single official has been charged with corruption or negligence for the cut-rate construction of these schools, and any who press the issue are met with the Chinese government's usual response to questions: threats, brute force, and detention. Not even the exact number or identities of the victims is known. "Only in May 2009 did the government say that 5,335 children were killed in school collapses -- a number that was in fact far below figures given by state media previously. No official list of the victims was released," according to Hui Min-Neo. And according to Ai Weiwei, the artist-activist who is most famous for his role in designing Beijing's 2008 "Bird's Nest" Olympic Stadium, says "We will never get a straight answer. Since the communist government was set up, the truth behind all major historical events has never been officially revealed."
Sadly, given China's horrifyingly effective history of covering up the truth, both at home and abroad, he may be right.
Works Cited
Chu, Ben. Chinese Whispers. London, 2013. Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
ISBN 978-1-7802-2474-9
Choi Chi-Yuk. "The Shame of Sichuan's Tofu Schools." South China Morning Post. 6 May, 2013. Web, 23 May, 2019.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1230807/shame-sichuans-tofu-schools
Fenby, Jonathan. Will China Dominate the 21st Century? Cambridge, 2017. Polity Publishing.
ISBN 978-1-5095-1097-9
Hui Min-Neo. "10 Years On, China Still Won't Tell Truth About Sichuan Quake: Activist Ai Weiwei." ABS-CBN News. 12 May, 2018. Web, 22 May, 2019.
https://news.abs-cbn.com/overseas/05/12/18/10-years-on-china-still-wont-tell-truth-about-sichuan-quake-activist-ai-weiwei
Pan Guoping & Ma Limin. China's Laws. Beijing, 2010. China Intercontinental Press
ISBN 978-7-5085-1719-3
Mosher, Stephen W. Bully of Asia. Washington, 2017. Regnery Publishing.
ISBN 978-1-62157-696-9
Rafferty, John P. & Pletcher, Kenneth. "Sechuan Earthquake of 2008." Britannica, 15 August, 2009. Web, 22 May, 2019.
https://www.britannica.com/event/Sichuan-earthquake-of-2008
Short, Michael. Comments on 'The "Tiananmen Square massacre" is constantly referred to. Why have I never seen film or video footage of a single death? The cameras were there, were they not?' The Guardian, 2011. Web, 3 May, 2019.
https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-2317,00.html)
Tang Jun, Zhang Yi, Wang Chunguang & Feng Ling. China's Social Development. Beijing 2010. China Intercontinental Press
ISBN 978-5085-1306-5
Taylor, Alan. "10 Years Since the Devastating 2008 Sichuan Earthquake." The Atlantic. May 9, 2018. web, 4 May, 2019.
https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2018/05/10-years-since-the-devastating-2008-sichuan-earthquake/560066/
Wong, Edward. "China Admits Building Flaws in Quake." New York Times. 4 September, 2008. Web, 20 May, 2019.
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/05/world/asia/05china.html
Yin Zhongqing. Trans. Wang Pingxing. China's Political System. Beijing, 2010. China Intercontinental Press.
ISBN 978-7-5085-1300-3