Posted on 05/12/2008 8:47:42 AM PDT by charles m
This is a great tragedy.
All we can do is join our prayers with those of the Chinese people to save as much life as possible.
Does anyone know the old anglicized name of Chengdu?
Or they would be ridiculed. What's worth looting for in China anyway.
The looters would be tripping over the trial lawyers and ‘greif counselors’
Because they don't have trailer homes?
I can see why Jim Rodgers, the mega-investor, loves China and doesn't India. A similar quake in a major Indian city would have killed fa, far more and left utter third-worldian social chaos in the ground.
Still -- the Chinese need to improve their quake-proofing in their building codes by a few orders of magnitude.
Then you talk to different Chinese than I do... Those that I work with and spend time with in Shanghai, Ningbo, Hangzhou, and Xiamen all were horrified at the attack.
I can't think of too many Americans who would cheer at the deaths of thousands of Chinese in a terror attack.
Read a little further up in this thread... Not a terror attack, but a natural disaster, but many FReepers seem to revel in the loss of life in China.
I'd recommend taking a trip to China sometime... Shanghai, Xiamen, Hong Kong, Nanjing, Chengdu, Kunming, Xi'an, Beijing, most of the mid-large cities are very modern. As modern as what you'll find in a lot of Europe, South America, or even the US. And definitely better than most of India...
Germany in 1942 was cultured, refined, wealthy and had great technological advances.
Fascism does that...
I spoke with random strangers. Chinese you know have a way of telling you what you want to hear, and not just about politics.
I spoke with random strangers. Chinese you know have a way of telling you what you want to hear, and not just about politics.
You write as if we are AT WAR with China. The people there are not 'the government'.
Actually, the average Chinese I have spoken to thinks of Mao as a demi-god. The younger generation actually has a more favorable view than the older generation, which nonetheless venerates and makes excuses for Mao despite personal experience of his famines and personal knowledge of people killed during the Cultural Revolution.
Don't you think they want to be free of the oppression of Communism? Remember Tienanmen Square? Would you have that same courage?
The average Chinese thinks communism works as a political system for the benefit of China, and that without the Party, China wouldn't exist. Tiananmen Square was just a power grab by one faction. The majority of the Tiananmen Incident organizers are as pro-government as they are anti-American.
Were there brave people in the movement? Absolutely. The founders of the Communist Party were pretty brave, too. They fought a German-, then US-backed Kuomintang government that came close to wiping them out. And yet the Communists went on to invade Tibet and engineer famines that wiped out tens of millions of people within the Chinese empire.
We are not at war with China, but that's because of the moderation of the government. If it were up to the Chinese people... (It's weird spiral - the government plays the nationalist card, the people up the ante, the government plays along, and so on).
Caution: loads of graphics for your bandwidth in the beginning of the topic.
Children Killed In China Earthquake
Sky News | Updated:08:00, Monday May 12, 2008 | Sky News
Posted on 05/12/2008 12:27:28 AM PDT by Lijahsbubbe
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2014670/posts
State media: 900 students buried by China quake (7.8 magnitude)
AP via Yahoo | 12 May 2008 | Christopher Bodeen
Posted on 05/12/2008 5:17:36 AM PDT by SE Mom
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2014723/posts
Earthquake Death Toll in China May Be 5,000
Primetime Politics | May 12, 2008 | Associated Press
Posted on 05/12/2008 6:18:12 AM PDT by moderatewolverine
Chinesehttp://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2014749/posts
Biq Quake Takes out Mobile Network in Chengdu
PC World | Monday, May 12, 2008 | Steven Schwankert, IDG News Service
Posted on 05/12/2008 9:38:33 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2014836/posts
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Thanks go to all who contributed topics, this one has the best selection of graphics (bandwidth alert), and at least two of the others are flame wars.[snip] The 1556 Shaanxi earthquake or Hua County earthquake... or Jiajing earthquake... is the deadliest earthquake on record, killing approximately 830,000 people. It occurred on the morning of 23 January 1556 AD in Shaanxi, China. More than 97 counties in the provinces of Shaanxi, Shanxi, Henan, Gansu, Hebei, Shandong, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangsu and Anhui were affected. A 520 mile-wide area was destroyed and in some counties, 60% of the population was killed. Most of the population in the area at the time lived in yaodong, artificial caves in loess cliffs, many of which collapsed during the catastrophic occurrence, with great loss of life. [end] *To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. |
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Using inferior materials and inferior methods. The corruption is extra. When I was a lad in Istanbul (long ago in another century) every time the ground shook a little a couple of apartment buildings would come down.The shaking wasn’t anything that would concern someone in California at all, just a little bit and buildings would fall. The problem was the concrete had no steel in it; a nine story building with no steel. A 5 earthquake in southern Viet Nam would probably level almost all of the masonry houses and some of the older buildings. Construction of even some largish edifices is actual brick, not just facing like we do here, but one row brick faced with cement stucco so that it looks like poured concrete. Often the bricks are staggered with spaces between them, sometimes filled with banana leaves and such under the stucco. A typhoon a couple of years ago blew down hundreds of those solid looking masonry houses around Da Nang.
Those cultures in Asia that can see others doing well and figure out why, and then imitate, do it well, Japan as the major for instance and now China.
And those cultures with a substantial Judaeo-Christian heritage do well because that religious tradition teaches trust. A man can make a deal with another (not related) and both have a reasonable expectation that the terms will be carried out. In Viet Nam the Catholics and Buddhists did not get along with each other very well at all . When the government got off the collectivist horse and opened up the economy to private enterprise the Catholics were instantly the business class. The Buddhists rubbed their eyes and saw what was happening and joined in. Now that the bulk of the population is busily engaged in business the inter-community ill-feeling has dissipated. Two strangers can shake hands and sign a contract and things get done.
Prayers up for all involved.
It's not a question of trust. In China, people you know are less likely to tell you what they really think than strangers. Strangers are more likely to be frank because they have nothing to lose by telling you unpleasant things. People you know are less likely to be frank because they think it might affect your opinion of them, and they really would like to be able to extract more favors from you in the future or preserve your friendship. It's that simple.
Thank you for the reference... One thing history has shown is that, generally, large empires and countries tend to work issues out with one another because they understand what is at risk (complete destruction of each other). Most of your problems tend to be either small countries looking to swing more power than they really can, or those seeking to regain their glory from days gone by.
China is a power in ascendancy - they won’t risk what they have now, nor what they can achieve in the future.
Russia is a country yearning for its “glory and power” from the past, and will do whatever it takes to either increase its own standing, or take down those above it (the US, the EU, and increasingly China) down a notch or 3.
I still say the next big Chinese conflict will be between China and Russia, and will be fought over the Eastern 400 km of the Russian state. That area is increasing under virtual economic and societal control of China, and being ignored more and more by Russia (as wells have problems, GAZPROM simply shuts them off and moves out, doesn’t repair them).
One day China will just assimilate that area. Russia will wake up only to find China declaring the region a Chinese protectorate, filled with a few million PLA troops, and with 90% of the population not only being ethnically closer to the Han than the Western Russians in St. Petersburg and Moscow, but feeling stronger loyalty simply because their economic and societal survival and existence owes itself to China.
And China will get the resources at home that they covet - the gas and oil fields of Eastern Russia.
Good observation.
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