China Earthquake's Toll Reflects Big Growth Gaps
With the death toll in China's earthquake passing 12,000, the devastation poses a particular challenge to China's leaders because it has highlighted an issue they have made a priority: the growing gaps in the nation's economic prosperity.
On Tuesday, rescue and relief workers struggled to reach victims in some of the remote areas most damaged by the magnitude-7.9 quake in the southwestern province of Sichuan. Steady rain hindered transportation and threatened to exacerbate the suffering of tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of people left homeless in China's worst natural disaster in decades.
The death toll in Sichuan alone had exceeded 12,000 as of Tuesday evening, with more than 26,000 injured and at least 9,400 buried in debris, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported, quoting a senior provincial official.
As soldiers and paramilitary police rushed to dig victims out from collapsed schools, homes and hospitals, it has become increasingly clear that the quake's greatest destruction was visited on rural areas -- and the small but fast-growing towns that have mushroomed from the farm fields in recent years as part of China's rapid urbanization. Such areas have far less stringent building-safety practices than China's relatively wealthy big cities, experts say, leaving their residents more vulnerable when disaster struck.
Read the report by Loretta Chao, Jason Leow, James T. Areddy and Gordon Fairclough:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121066313905887941.html?mod=djemasialinks
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