Helping Hands

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Unlikely Hero, Familiar Villains
One of the most widely praised aspects of the relief operation was the speed and scale with which the government responded. And to both Chinese and foreigners the man primarily responsible for that was the country's Premier, 66-year-old Wen Jiabao. Within two hours of the earthquake, Wen was on a plane to the disaster area and for the next four days, Chinese TV was flooded with images of the increasingly exhausted-looking leader as he rallied the relief forces, offered succor to survivors and even choked up himself.

Few doubted Wen's sincerity or sympathy for the victims. He has long been the human face of the country's Communist Party. But there was also little doubt that Wen was acutely aware that the survival of the regime may depend on its handling of crises. Having discarded its Marxist-Leninist ideology, the government is increasingly reliant on public approval for its legitimacy. Netizens responded rapturously to Wen's TV appearances: "I couldn't help crying when I saw the pictures of Premier Wen in the stricken region," wrote one poster in a typical online comment. "I feel very safe to have a wonderful leader like this."

Wen's star turn notwithstanding, the real danger to the party comes from its rotten base: the county and township officials whose corruption and venality has had the greatest impact on the lives of hundreds of millions. There's sure to be backlash over the number of children killed by the quake, buried in their classrooms as shoddily built schools collapsed around them. In one structure alone — the three-story Juyuan Middle School in Dujiangyan — at least 600 students died. "It was built out of tofu," says Hu Yuefu, 44, of the building that toppled and killed his 15-year-old daughter. He holds local government officials and building contractors responsible. "I hope there is an investigation," Hu says. "Otherwise, there are a thousand parents who would beat them to death."

Corruption has proved an inflammatory issue in the past — it added fuel to the Tiananmen protest in 1989 — and mixed with student deaths it could be explosive. Beijing's first instinct will be to sweep the schools scandal under the rug. Much of the online anger over the collapsed schools has been deleted and all discussion of the topic has been banned. But Jiang of the University of Alberta says that, as China's civil society develops, leaders know they must adapt. "It will be extremely tempting for the control types and ideologues to use [the earthquake] to glorify the party and to direct this new openness toward reporting only good news. But that will be one step backward out of two steps forward, no more."

After the disaster, it will be harder to stifle the civic impulses of people like Chen Gang, the president of a Chengdu knife-manufacturing company who scrambled to help with relief efforts. The country was focused on material things, Chen says, but the earthquake forced people to remember their fellow citizens. "The whole country suddenly united. It was really miraculous," says Chen, 49. "For the nation historically, when you come back later it will be [considered] a good thing. I'm not talking about the party, I'm talking about this land." The Wenchuan earthquake has exposed how much China has changed and offered a fleeting glimpse of what might be. The political and cultural aftershocks will roll on for years after the ground has ceased to tremble.