“La Tribune” (French Newspaper) Reports on Sichuan Earthquake: The CCP Receives Criticism from Civilians

On May 29th, 2008, the French national broadcast channel reported on an article about the earthquake in Sichuan China by the newspaper “La tribune”. The title of the essay was "The Beijing government is criticised after the earthquake". An extract of the original report is below:

The article pointed out the main difficulties the CCP are facing is how to show that it can deal with the situation of the disaster, especially how to respond to the severe criticism of the disaster-stricken people.
Decisions to save those in the disaster were made very slowly and areas far from the city only were rescued three days after the earthquake, especially the school buildings of inferior quality, which received much criticism. The earthquake demolished a school, but the buildings surrounding it did not collapse. The parents of the students did not reply. The paper reported Chinese people did not feel that it was strange that the school buildings were of inferior quality, to save money, the building engineer could come up with a blueprint within a couple of days, the materials for building are also an assembled mix, of sand, mud, copper, iron, and so on, whatever materials, as long as one can save money, then one would save money.”

“The “La tribune” newspaper local news report also came to know that the inhabitants of the disaster stricken Sichuan did not have residential insurance and when their houses and rooms collapsed then they had nothing left at all. Those retired people who were struck by the earthquake were even more pitiable. According to Chinese government numbers, only 2.74 percent of those in Sichuan had residential insurance. Until 27th May, the local insurance companies have only paid out 92,300,000 RMB, and at most have only paid out 300 million RMB.”