Earthquake's wider impact

Everyone is talking about the earthquake; the media is blanketed with it, Chinese people are all continuing to fund raise, bloggers discuss the most and least generous celebrity/company/entrepreneur etc, volunteers pile in to help, charities organise fundraiser events, Foreign governments donate supplies (the country has run out of tents!) and everyone competes to donate even more.

For those westerners here, we have been eagerly anticipating the Olympics, not because of the sports but because of everything else that it will affect. Now we have the earthquake and the impact is incredible -the Olympics will be boring in comparison.

Every company is competing who can donate more and employees donate more and more by the day, government departments set a mandated minimum donation from public servants, companies that do not loudly say how much they have donated run the risk of being boycotted (and many have, e.g. McDonalds branches being forced to print flyers saying how much they donated, as customers were concerned they had not). Will it affect all the other causes that need money? Will businesses do anything above and beyond cash donations?

The whole country has learnt what a charity/NGO is and they are, for the first time, not only being motivated (by media, peer pressure, guilt etc) to help, have found a way to help by donating..and there are plenty who can afford to donate. The amounts are staggering. Will it kick start the charity sector in China? Will it kick start a new conscience amongst the urban rich?

During the 3 minute silence the country came to a standstill and made a noise, during the 3 days of mourning it was so intense websites literally stopped publishing any non-earthquake news, some people were beaten up for celebrating a birthday party and you were unpatriotic if you did not buy a flag, a sticker and a 'I love China' t-shirt. Great that the patriotism was no longer channeled against Westerners (because we all, of course, want to split China up) and was just a solidarity thing for those affected. Will this last or will the patriotism quickly turn anti-someone else? Will it be noted that foreigners living here donated so much and that foreign aid has come from other governments or will that be swallowed up in the media? Will the fact that Taiwan provided experts be the start of some closer collaboration between the two?

As there are so few charities in China; especially few that are allowed to fundraise and are capable of managing such amounts of money, all the corporate, foreign, individual donations have all gone to just 3 or 4 organisations. Whether they will be transparent with their spending is one issue; another is whether they will sub-contract to local charities, who are always desperate for funding, yet another is will all the other charities who are piling in to the affected areas to help (from other regions in China) mark a step growth in the scale and capacity of the sector in China?

Unfortunately a second outlet for people's desire to help has been through flying or driving to Sichuan to volunteer. The result is scary. Even without the volunteers the army themselves lacked equipment and training. The volunteers blocked the roads, used up scarce water and food, got in the way and most of all, did not even realise they were making things worse not better. Most just ended up taking photos and showing all their friends back home. Some did this because they could not find anything productive to do; others actually went to the affected area with the objective of taking photos and showing off how they 'helped'. Will this lead to a huge increase in volunteering in China and will charities improve their abilities to manage such volunteers? Is it just a skin-deep act of showing off and will put all charities off using volunteers & all true volunteers from volunteering?

There are so many aspects to the impact of this earthquake to keep everyone talking. For many Chinese though, they are starting to get fed up of the horror and the depressing images. Outside of China everyone compares the relatively efficient government response to the Americans' mess-up in New Orleans and the Burmese Generals selfishness and evilness; Charities fear they cannot raise more money for Burma as the media has such poor access to the country there are few images/updates available on the news; Corporations admit China's market is just a little more important than Burma's (hence their massive donations to China in comparison) despite the lack of domestic funding resources in Burma compared to China.

Plan is doing something and I will share details of that later for those interested. In the meantime www.china-crossroads.com is the place to go for updates. I was actually in the air when the earthquake struck, on my was to Bangkok for a 2 day work trip (followed by a few days holiday in Malaysia), and just got back on Tuesday night to the furore, here in Shanghai (Olympic torch was in town, so everyone was super-patriotic!)

Reflections on the Earthquake

I have been in Bangkok for 2 days at a Plan regional meeting, and was on the way there as the Earthquake struck. My colleagues at the meeting are highly experienced in disaster relief, unfortunately, due to our projects in Pakistan and Tsunami affected areas. Plan China's work has not been too badly affected, though hundreds of houses and tens of schools in the villages we work, about 400km from the epicentre were damaged.

Now, we must decide what we will do in response, since we have no experience in disaster relief in China, nor do we work in the areas directly affected. However, as Plan and others recognise, after the first 2 weeks of rescuing survivors, comes the incredibly hard job of rebuilding villages, schools, communities, water systems, food supplies, livelihoods and so on.

In these areas, Plan China does have expertise, and if we couple this with the expertise from our Asian colleagues in child-centred disaster relief planning participation, socio-emotional support programs and the other programs. We have a number of reports on what we did well and what we did badly in the Tsunami affected areas especially, so we will have to see what Plan China decides to do.

As terrible as the earthquake has been, the western media is now starting to focus on the wider impacts on China and, possibly, some silver linings. Money is not the problem -the government does not lack money, and neither do many of its middle/upper class citizens and Chinese/Foreign businesses -all of whom who are donating spectacular amounts. What is the problem is managing and coordinating the resources, departments and organisations involved.

What the disaster might lead to is a more free media, a greater focus on preventing disasters, less attention on the Tibet/Olympics issue and, most importantly, an opportunity. An opportunity to rebuild communities, that were already quite poor, with a focus on the elderly, women or children; an opportunity to ensure a corruption-free rebuilding project where villagers get fair compensation, quality homes etc; an opportunity to make the communities better than what they were before with more attention to environmental issues for the new buildings; an opportunity for community involvement in decision making and reconstruction efforts etc.

We will have to see what happens; we can, i am sure, all hope for the best for the victims in China and those in Myanmar, whose situation is undeniably bleak in comparison to China. China is fortunate to have a relatively competent government, a wealthy government, a strong capable private sector, an open (though not free) media and the desire to do what is best for its people. If only Myanmar was the same.

After the rain

Yesterday was beautiful, with not just clear blue skies but also (unusually) some wisps of cloud floating through the sky. The perfect weather to overcome a hangover by spending a few hours in some of Beijing's beautiful parks which are being replanted with flowers (everything dies in winter and gets replanted in the spring). The day was only ruined because the DVD i watched stopped working 15 mins before the end :(

Today, the sky is blue but the pollution has started to return -1 day more of solid traffic and the sun will be hidden once again... until it rains again, like it did on Saturday, which cleared the skies and alleviated Beijing's water shortage for a couple more days. Thankfully it only started pouring down after me and Chris had got off the Great Wall into a bus. We'd spent the entire previous day hiking and (literally) climbing the Great Wall with 5 girls.

Unfortunately the girls all bailed out and got a ride back to Beijing Friday night, wasting all the camping gear they had carried for 10 hours; leaving me and Chris to spend the night alone in one of the guard towers atop the Wall. I fell asleep looking through the tower entrance at a the stars, though didn't sleep too well because of the worry some night-time hikers might stumble (literally) onto us during the night.

We'd already had to deal with 2 hikers who wondered through at 11pm, a Chinese couple who must be crazy to be hiking in the dark over such dangerous terrain. Though we were relieved to hear one of the voices was female as they approached we still hid as they walked through our tower -with us on the top!

The long holiday over (Thursday was int'l workers day, the weekend was moved to be Friday and Saturday and Sunday was a holiday for youth to commemorate youth day) I'm in Beijing for a week before heading to Bangkok for a couple days work and Malaysia for a quick break.