Word: sichuan
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Until the devastating May 12 earthquake in China's Sichuan province, the attention of most China watchers had been focused on a completely different part of the country: Tibet. After bloody anti-Chinese protests in mid-March were suppressed by the Chinese military, Beijing closed the Himalayan region off from the outside world and made scores of arrests. Those moves brought widespread international condemnation, which in turn sparked a nationalistic backlash in China that some feared might imperil the smooth running of the Beijing Olympics this August...
...Those concerns were heightened in recent days when Beijing, citing the Sichuan earthquake, postponed a scheduled June 11 meeting between its representatives and those of the Tibetan government-in-exile in Dharamsala, India. The meeting, set before the earthquake, would have marked the resumption of talks suspended in 2006, and thus was widely seen as an encouraging sign that rapprochement was possible...
...another attempt to publicly demonstrate goodwill, the entire government-in-exile led by the Dalai Lama participated in lengthy prayers for victims of the Sichuan earthquake on June 4. "The Dalai wants to be invited back, but he wants to walk back in, not crawl," says the go-between. "He is already in serious danger of losing control to the radicals. He has to have something to show the Tibetan people. He has bent over backward, but it's all up to Beijing now. There's no more...
...authorities likely to be pleased by the muttering among parents about bringing in lawyers. After the quake, some government officials have been, by Chinese standards, remarkably candid. Lin Qiang, vice inspector of the Sichuan provincial education department, told Chinese news service Xinhua "If we educational officials hadn't left loopholes for corruption, the collapsed buildings could have been as solid [as those that remained standing]." He added that "Seeking truth is more important than losing face." Such sentiments, one Chinese lawyer told TIME, "all but invite the parents to keep pressing on this issue, to do whatever they...
...This small, impoverished town 37 miles (60 km) north of Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, has become the focal point of anguish over what Chinese now call "tofu schools," nearly 7,000 schoolhouses that collapsed in the quake while other buildings around them remained standing. The government says that nearly 300 children were killed in the Juyuan Middle School alone, and the anger of the parents of the victims is not diminishing, even though this past week the government reiterated its promises to investigate what happened and to include parents on a panel that will oversee the inquiry. Parents...