Word: reliefs
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...causing traffic jams on the narrow mountain roads of Sichuan province. Private aid takes many forms: beef trucked in from Inner Mongolia, sleeping bags shipped from Shenzhen, building materials from Chongqing, millions of bottles of water and packets of instant noodles. Volunteers are working in areas overlooked by government relief efforts. In the village of Yongan, south of the devastated city of Beichuan, quake victims, from the very young to the very old, line the road waiting for the citizen cavalry to arrive. "We're counting on volunteers to bring us food," says Wang Shaoqing, 82. As he speaks children...
...Chinese press has been freed by the information ministry to saturate the airwaves with quake coverage. The leash was also loosened for the unruly Internet. Popular blogs were relatively uncensored; commentators posting to mainstream discussion forums were even allowed to criticize the government's handling of some aspects of relief operations - the failure to use helicopters during the first three days after the quake, for example. As surprising as the freedom is the sophistication of the coverage: it's on television and radio around the clock, and newspapers have put out special editions. One news anchor even dressed down...
...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...
...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...
...absurd in such a catastrophe that the military junta in Burma has asked people to vote on a constitutional referendum called "discipline-flourishing democracy." It is equally appalling, while people are dying in the wake of the cyclone, to slow the arrival of relief workers. It's too bad Burma has no oil. If it did, I'd bet America and its allies would find a way to solve the problem. John C.M. Lee, Hong Kong...