On the balance, the Chinese government’s response to the earthquake has been quite open and effective considering the circumstances. There may be one large exception, if you’ve been following the news you may have heard a lot of stories about schools collapsing. As a Post article by Ariana Eunjung Cha shows, that isn’t just a matter of sensationalism, it appears that schools were harder hit than other buildings.
It would not surprise me in the least if local governments consistently used shoddy or cut rate materials for school construction. That said, I’m not sure why they’d build teacher’s dorms to be any higher quality, perhaps the schools had to be expanded recently and are newer.
Regardless, the central-local divide is a critical dynamic for understanding China. Outside of religious/ethnic/foreign policy issues, most complaints Chinese have with their government involves misdeeds by local officials. While authoritarian, in some sense the central government is accountable to the people for its performance. Communist ideology is no longer a major factor, nationalism does play in but that’s also tied to performance, and the military/police are a critical backstop but haven’t been necessary in full force since Tiananmen.
However, as I read it, the local governments are primarily accountability to the central government and not their people. Village elections do exist, but not above the village level. Local officials do rely on business contacts or even their own businesses for both official resources and corruption, but that is a limited constiuency. They’re primarily judged by blunt performance metrics from the central government that will determine their long term success in the Communist party. These metrics often do not fully line up with official policy. Environmental considerations and labor rights often feature prominently in central rules, but unalloyed economic growth as well as stability are what really get measured.
Thus the relationship of the central government to the local ones is complicated. If the local governments systematically built shabby schools, the central government may punish those officials responsible. However, unless a major outcry occurs the government would just as soon ignore any cases that are not exceptionally egregious or committed by cadres lacking in connections. If a broad enough outcry occurs action may well be taken against local officials, but those who lead the outcry will likely also be punished.
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