Today is the 30th anniversary of the 20th century’s deadliest earthquake, which struck the city of Tangshan, China in the dead of night, with the power of 400 atomic bombs. The quake claimed the lives of a quarter of the city’s million residents. Some sources estimate the death toll as much as three times higher. The Maoist government had ignored warnings from scientists, who noted the rising seismic activity, choosing to focus on internal disputes and perception shaping instead. They also refused all foreign aid offered to them, although around 165,000 people were recorded as being severely injured, a spokesman for the Red Flag journal declaring: “Any grave natural disaster can be overcome with the guidance of Chairman Mao”.

Rowan Callick reports on the cover-up existing to this day in The Australian:

Coalminer Li Yulin, aged 41, clawed his way out of his collapsed home in his underwear and stumbled towards the nearby Kailuan mine. He flagged down the red mine ambulance that was speeding towards him.
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They drove into the heart of Beijing, arriving at 8am at Zhongnanhai, the leaders’ compound next to the ancient imperial Forbidden City. Dozens of armed soldiers surrounded them. When they had explained their mission, two policemen led them to a reception room where they met vice-premier Ji Dengkui, whom Li recognised from newspaper photos.

“I cried in excitement and he held me in his arms,” Li said. “I felt like a lost son meeting his mother again. I thought, ‘The people of Tangshan are saved.”‘

Li and driver Cui breathlessly reported what they knew of the disaster, concluding by shouting: “Long live the Communist Party. Long live Chairman Mao.” Li lost 22 family members in the earthquake, including his parents and his eldest son, aged 15.

How did the leaders in Zhongnanhai, mesmerised by their own Cultural Revolution endgame and riven by rivalry, respond to the almost supernatural expectations of Li and Cui? Slowly and inadequately.

Mao’s fourth wife, Jiang Qing, one of the Gang of Four, took charge of the rescue efforts, focusing on propaganda rather than practical needs. The next day the story from the official Xinhua newsagency, which still operates today, was headed by a Maoist slogan: “Humans must have the strength to subdue the heavens.” It focused on Mao’s leadership against such disasters.

The People’s Daily newspaper, which also still operates, reported how brave survivors had gathered to criticise Deng Xiaoping’s revisionism. A party member was praised for choosing to rescue the communist branch secretary despite hearing cries from his trapped son and daughter. By the time he returned home, the children were dead.

It took a week for the People’s Liberation Army to bring cranes to the disaster site, by which time almost all the survivors under the rubble had fallen silent, as aftershocks kept hitting the beleaguered city.
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After Zhang Qingzhou published a novel, on the 20th anniversary, about the earthquake that destroyed his home when he was 16, he was contacted by a reader claiming the disaster had been predicted, as had another earthquake measuring 7.3 on the Richter scale 17 months earlier, near the northeastern city of Haicheng, where local officials had been warned and taken precautions, restricting the death toll to 2000.
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Zhang followed up his reader’s leads, speaking with Yang Youchen who, as head of the China Earthquake Administration’s office in Tangshan, had predicted at a meeting early in 1976 that evidence from more than 40 seismic monitoring posts indicated a severe earthquake was due in July or August within a 50km radius of Tangshan.

Yang was punished for his prediction by being sent to a school for unsound cadres. When he repeated his warning at a China Seismological Bureau meeting in Jinan in May, he was removed.

Zhang says the people who succeeded Yang “died in the earthquake, burying his warnings with them”. The cover-up became public when Zhang’s book was published, after a battle with authorities. It soon sold out and reprints have been officially banned.

In Tangshan Apocalypse Zhang wrote that Geng Qingguo, of Beijing’s earthquake forecast team, had predicted the area around Beijing might suffer an earthquake as strong as 7 on the Richter scale, following the Haicheng event. Her reports were quashed by the national bureau.

Geng wrote to Xinhua newsagency criticising her boss, Mei Shirong, who responded that “Geng recklessly made trouble for me. Beijing is the capital. Words must be used with more caution here.”

The warnings came thick and fast in July, Zhang says: from a seismic monitoring post at Kailuan coalmine on July 6, from Zhao Gexhuang mine post and from Beijing’s earthquake forecast team on July 14, from Hongwei middle school post on July 16, from Tongxian county earthquake station on July24 and from Ma Jiagou mine post just 11 hours before the quake.

Zhang says Wang Chengmin, a national seismological bureau researcher, wanted to report the heightened activity, but, he told Zhang, the bureau’s leaders were too busy “criticising Deng Xiaoping and rightism” to pay attention.

Academic discussion had been replaced by a determination “to cover up the truth and to control public opinion”, Wang said. “Certainly it would have been possible to send a warning to people in Tangshan.”

Bizarrely, the handling of the same earthquake in Qinglong County, just 115 km from Tangshan, is hailed by the UN as a case of “public administration best practice”. In 1996 the UN Global Programme for the Integration of Public Administration and the Science of Disasters (UNGP-IPASD), released a report titled “Integration of Public Administration and Earthquake Science: The Best Practice Case of Qinglong County”:

The magnitude 7.8 Great Tangshan Earthquake (GTE) occurred under the city of Tangshan, China, on July 28, 1976. When the dust settled, a quarter of a million people had died, and only a small handful of buildings were left standing. Emerging from this tragedy is a public administration best practice: public administrators of Qinglong County integrated scientific knowledge and monitoring by lay public, and prepared for the Great Tangshan Earthquake. Although 180,000 buildings in the county were destroyed, not one life was lost in the county due to the devastation (one person had a heart attack) while over 240,000 people died in surrounding areas.

“Surrounding areas” of course primarily refers to the flattened city of Tangshen, possibly the 20th century’s best example of public administration worst practice.

The UN Global Programme for the Integration of Public Administration and the Science of Disasters conducted a detailed study of Qinglong County between 1995-1996. This is Qinglong County’s remarkable story.

Two weeks before the Tangshan earthquake…
Administrator Wang Chunqing attended a conference organized by the State Seismological Bureau (SSB) for the North China-Bohai region. During this conference, on the evening of July 16, 1976, scientist Wang Chengmin of the SSB’s Analysis and Prediction Department spoke at an informal meeting attended by sixty conference participants. Young administrator Wang Chunqing was among the audience. He took detailed notes of the scientist’s presentation, including this entry:

“…There is a strong possibility of a magnitude 5 earthquake from July 22 to August 5, 1976 in the Tangshan region. A magnitude 8 is also likely in the second half of ‘76. Preparations should be made immediately…”

On July 21, 1976, administrator Wang Chunqing returned to Qinglong County. He reported on the Tangshan conference, highlighted the talk given by scientist Wang Chengmin, and included updated information from the county’s 16 lay monitoring stations. Public officials of Qinglong County took the report very seriously and acted upon the information immediately.
School classes were relocated and held outdoors several days before the eventual earthquake. Students also played an important part in the collection of data.
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An official early warning from the Chinese Communist Party Committee of Qinglong County was issued advising people to prepare for a possible devastating earthquake.

The County government took advantage of a planned agricultural meeting to publicize the earthquake warning. Telephone and public announcement systems were also used to broadcast the alert.

Volunteer earthquake monitoring stations report:

From July 24th, natural spring water had become muddy and undrinkable.

By July 26th, temporary earthquake tents were set up. Led by County Secretary Ran Guangqi, who moved into an earthquake tent himself, over 60% of Qinglong County’s more than 470,000 residents moved out of their homes. Those who did not move were instructed to keep their doors and windows open at all times to avoid being trapped in case of an earthquake.
Businesses also relocated to outdoor locations where they continued their normal activities.
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In Qinglong County (115 km from Tangshan), more than 180,000 buildings were destroyed by the GTE; over 7,000 of these totally collapsed. However, only one person died, and he died of a heart attack. Meanwhile, in the city of Tangshan and in all its other surrounding counties, more than 240,000 people were crushed to death and 600,000 were seriously injured. Five hours after the earthquake, Qinglong County dispatched the first medical team to the disaster zone, and within a very short time, sent relief teams to Tangshan to help with rescue work and transport of the wounded.
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In the twenty years since the Great Tangshan Earthquake, the Chinese have strengthened their capacity to mitigate earthquake disasters from the perspectives of both science and public administration. Successes in these areas have resulted in fewer fatalities during earthquakes.
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On this twentieth anniversary of the Great Tangshan Earthquake, we look forward to the day when communities will be able to reduce loss of lives from natural disasters because of the lessons learned from Qinglong County.

It should be noted that the above presentation was designed for the UNGP-IPASD by members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute of Geology and the State Seismological Bureau, also of China.

The contrast between the stories of these two communities is a most tragic irony.

Forewarning relay and preparation were not the only problems in Tangshan. The BBC reported on this day 30 years ago:

The survivors of the Tangshan quake are living in tents and are expected to be moved to winter shelters, the New China news agency has reported. Aircraft and lorries have been taking large quantities of relief supplies to help the relief effort.

The authorities later hope to move people to simple houses, which can withstand tremors and are warm and rainproof before winter sets in.

Chinese officials have rejected any offers of help from the outside world, saying that survivors have enough to eat and wear and there are sufficient medical supplies and doctors in the city.

Well, perhaps not:

One week [after the quake], Tan [Pengru] walked down Victory Street on crutches. The four-lane street was lined with dead bodies, barely leaving room for a bicycle path. Sometimes, the corpses were stacked into piles, and in between them, survivors were cooking their meals in makeshift stoves, oblivious to the horror and the stench that permeated the air.

There was also a short period of lawlessness when food and clean water were extremely scarce. “We had airdrops of food, but people had to fight for them. There was occasional violence,” he sighed. Fortunately law and order was quickly restored with the help of the army that was pouring into the city and mounting a mammoth rescue effort.

Adding insult to injury, two years ago a “memorial” wall was built in Tangshan out of three granite blocks, with families being charged a cost of 1000 RMB to have a perished loved one’s name displayed on it. Or a generous 800 RMB for a place on the back of the wall. Needless to say, a not uncommon view of the residents of Tangshan is to see this as “using a disaster as a gimmick to make money”.

Tangshan before the quake:

After the quake:

Read the rest of this entry »

Do read Hugh Fitzgerald’s empassioned and brilliant essay, inspired by Richard Cohen’s column on Tuesday, obscenely titled “Hunker Down With History”.
Hugh starts off taking modern journalism to task, but achieves so much more. I am not going to quote any of it here. Read the whole thing. It is a history lesson the West urgently needs.

Another fantastic history lesson for Cohen was written by Israel Matzav here. Here’s a part of it, but again, it is well worth reading in full.

The term “Palestina” was invented by the Roman emperor Hadrian. The Romans wanted to rename Eretz Yisrael (the Land of Israel) after the Philistines, the longtime enemy of the Jews. Hadrian believed that by renaming the Jewish homeland after the Jews’ archenemy, he would be able to forever break the bond between the Land of Israel and the Jewish people.

But even the name of the Philistines, from which the term “Palestine” was adopted, is completely alien to the Land of Israel.

The name Philistines in Hebrew is plishtim, which comes from the Hebrew verb polshim (foreign invaders).
Arabs only came to the Land of Israel in large numbers after the Jews returned in the 20th century and started to rebuild the nation, thereby creating economic and employment opportunities for Arab immigrants.

Prior to 1870, when Jews started to return to the Holy Land in large numbers, there were fewer than 100,000 Arabs living in what is today the State of Israel – including Yesha (the Hebrew acronym for Judea, Samaria and the Gaza District).

This small number of nomadic, tribal Arabs who lived in the Holy Land before the modern Jewish return never considered themselves to be a separate people or nation.

The Arabs who lived in the Land of Israel were not “Palestinians” but Arabs – part of a huge Arab people with 22 very large independent nations that control one-ninth of the land mass on the planet Earth.

In an interview given by Zuhair Mohsen to the Dutch newspaper Trouw in March 1977, Mr. Mohsen explains the origin of the ‘Palestinians’:

The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct “Palestinian people” to oppose Zionism.

For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.

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Israel is anything but a mistake, and history shows the justice of Israel’s cause. With the exception of the period between the two Jewish Temples between roughly 586 and 516 BCE, Jews ruled this land continuously from approximately 1300 BCE until 68 CE. Since that time, no other government has been based in Israel, no other country has called Jerusalem its capitol, and no other people has called this land its home. It is not history that is Israel’s enemy but the false narrative of history presented to the World by the Arab Muslims. It is not history that is Israel’s enemy, but Arab attempts to wipe out the vestiges of that history, as if destroying all of the Temple artifacts on the Temple Mount will confirm that it was ‘always’ Haram al-Sharif, that two Jewish Temples never stood there and that Jesus never argued with money changers there.

This country was deserted swampland for much of the period between 68 CE and the beginning of the return of larger numbers of Jews started in 1870. Israel’s interior areas were mainly a desert-like wasteland while her coast was a malaria-ridden swamp. But Jews always prayed three times a day that God should gather them in from their diaspora and bring them back to this country. Many Jews attempted to come here on their own. Jews were a majority of the population of Jerusalem in the 19th century, and settled many of the cities of the Galilee as well. In 1844 – when the Land of Israel was controlled by the Turkish Muslims – the Turkish census counted 7,120 Jews and 5,000 Muslims living in Jerusalem. Thus, Jerusalem was already a Jewish city 160 years ago. Until an Arab massacre wiped them out in 1929, there was even a large Jewish community in Hebron, which included a major Talmudical academy, which was transplanted from the village of Slobodka in Lithuania.

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Don’t forget to read Hugh Fitzgerald’s piece now.

Yet another brilliant essay from Fjordman has been posted at the Brussels Journal.

Stupidity Without Borders – The Alliance of Utopias

From the desk of Fjordman on Mon, 2006-07-17 08:38

The 20th and the beginning of the 21st centuries have witnessed the most spectacular population growth in human history, most of it in Third World countries. The world’s population, estimated at 6.4 billion in 2006, grows by more than 70 million people per year. In sixty years, Brazil’s population has increased by 318 per cent; Ethiopia’s by 503 per cent. There are now 73 million people in Ethiopia – more than the population of Britain or France.

At the same time, many of the most economically successful countries, both in the East and in the West, have problems with ageing or declining populations. At its peak around 1910, one-quarter of the world’s population lived in Europe or North America. Today the percentage has probably declined to about one-eighth. South Korea’s birthrate has dropped to the point where the average Korean woman is expected to have only one child throughout her life. The U.S. still has a birthrate of more than two, while the U.K. saw births inch up from 1.63 to 1.74 and Germany from 1.34 to 1.37 in the same period. The low birthrate problem in Asia is rooted in women’s rising social and economic standing. Japan’s birthrate was 1.28, comparable to Taiwan’s 1.22, and Hong Kong’s 0.94.

“Europe and Japan are now facing a population problem that is unprecedented in human history,” said Bill Butz, president of the Population Reference Bureau. Countries have lost people because of wars, disease and natural disasters but never because women stopped having enough children. Japan announced that its population had shrunk in 2005 for the first time, and that it was now the world’s most elderly nation. Italy was second. On average, women must have 2.1 children in their lifetimes for a society to replenish itself, accounting for infant mortality and other factors. Only one country in Europe – Muslim Albania – has a fertility rate above 2. Russia’s fertility rate is 1.28.

Writer Spengler in the Asia Times Online commented that demography is destiny: “Never in recorded history have prosperous and peaceful nations chosen to disappear from the face of the earth. Yet that is what the Europeans have chosen to do. Back in 1348 Europe suffered the Black Death.” “The plague reduced the estimated European population by about a third. In the next 50 years, Europe’s population will relive – in slow motion – that plague demography, losing about a fifth of its population by 2050.”

It’s numbers like these that have prompted Singapore’s former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew to state that “it’s demography, and not democracy, that will be the critical factor shaping growth and security in the 21st century. High rates of births are contributing to the booming populations which are dragging down developing nations. Meanwhile falling birth rates are sapping the growth of developed nations.” “Although migration is one option developed countries are looking at to keep their economies vibrant,” Lee said, “it might not solve all their troubles and might even breed social tensions.” According to him, governments may not be able to afford to keep out of personal issues like sex, marriage and procreation much longer.

Historian Niall Ferguson reveals how Islam is winning the numbers game. “If fertility persisted at such low levels, within 50 years Spain’s population would decline by 3-4 million, Italy’s by a fifth. Not even two World Wars had inflicted such an absolute decline in population.” “In 1950 there had been three times as many people in Britain as in Iran. By 1995 the population of Iran had overtaken that of Britain. By 2050, the population of Iran could be more than 50 per cent larger. At the time of writing, the annual rate of population growth is more than seven times higher in Iran than in Britain.”

Even in developing countries such as fast-evolving China, population growth is falling, and in the Indian subcontinent, Muslims have higher growth rates than Hindus or other non-Muslims. We thus have a situation with an explosive population growth in failed countries, while many of the most economically and technologically advanced nations, Eastern and Western, have stagnating populations. This strange and possibly unprecedented situation, which could perhaps be labelled “survival of the least fit”, will have dramatic consequences for the world. It is already producing the largest migration waves in history, threatening to swamp islands of prosperity in a sea of poverty.

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You really should read it all.