For China's Local Officials, a New Test

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Picking Up the Pieces

China continues recovery efforts after a devastating 7.9-magnitude earthquake hit central China on May 12, 2008, and rendered millions of people homeless.

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The government in Beijing and private donors are sending billions of dollars of aid and reconstruction cash into the province, and that sets up another challenge for local officials: resisting temptations to take for themselves, temptations to which many before have succumbed.

"Rebuilding after the earthquake could be a turning point for local government's image," said Ren Jianming, a professor at the School of Public Policy and Management at Tsinghua University. "Corruption so easily happens and used to happen so much."

More than 300 auditors have been dispatched to Sichuan to watch over the spending, and national officials vow to be merciless with those caught stealing or taking bribes to allow substandard materials to be used in rebuilding. Local officials are being blamed by parents of the estimated 9,000 schoolchildren who died when their classrooms collapsed around them during the earthquake, burying them in the rubble. The parents allege that corrupt officials turned a blind eye to substandard construction.

Mao Shoulong, a professor of public administration at Renmin University, said holding individuals responsible for failures helps build public trust. "The education department is not corrupted, but there may be a corrupt education department official," Mao said. "The responsibilities of collapsed school buildings should be specified and allocated to individuals."

Local Communist Party officials are attempting to underscore that sense of personal responsibility as they manage the flood evacuation. Yang Zhumei, an official with Fucheng district's foreign affairs office, was handing out Communist Party lapel pins to identify all members as the district's command center was evacuating its equipment and personnel to the mountains.

"Communist Party members are on the front lines," she said, as she attached her own pin. "People will watch you. You have to help other people. You have to be responsible."

The evacuation, which has been taking place in stages over the past several days, threatened to create havoc in Mianyang city, located north of the provincial capital of Chengdu. One man said he did not think twice, just grabbed a quilt and a tarp and ran to his evacuation point about 20 minutes up a hill from his village, when he got his notice May 22. "They said the flood could come anytime," said the man, who would not give his name.

In recent days, local officials have been more measured and informed when they tell people they have to leave. Luo Yuhua, 77, sat calmly Thursday afternoon under a leaking tarp strung between bamboo poles along a main highway, fingering the evacuation notice she had just been handed.

"The government told me a tent has been set up over the mountain and they have prepared sausages, noodles and rice," she said. She was told that she did not have to leave right away but that someone on a motorbike would ride up the highway banging a gong when the time came to go, signaling it would be four or five hours before the floodwaters reached her area in Longmen town.

Luo had every confidence she would not be left behind to face the flood. "The government can control this," she said.

Cheng Ju, 34, a reserve soldier guarding a path to a low-lying village to prevent children and the elderly from entering a danger zone, said the motto of his unit is "Leave the small family, take care of the big family."

Shen, the community administrator, knows what he means. "I never had time to take care of my family" after the earthquake, she said, pausing. "When I say that, I want to cry."

Zhao also feels the stress. Her one comfort is that when she returns home to her family's tarp each night, her husband brings her a basin of fresh water to wash her face and feet. She said: "I am very touched by that."

Researcher Liu Liu contributed to this report.