Though better than the response to the 2008 earthquake in Wenchuan, survivors face a third night with no shelter and little food or water. The economic impact from the earthquake should be limited, though, and may even give a “rebuilding boost” to the local economy.
No matter what the Chinese may think of the disaster-relief efforts of the new leadership, its online contingent seems relieved to find both solace and resources in their new frontier: “I remember in 2008 when there wasn’t Weibo yet. Now news transmission is so much faster and more convenient.”
Hu, who has been described as the most dangerous woman in China because of her investigative reporting, gives an interview about the challenges facing new president Xi Jinping in 2013.
“We seek to be a stabilizing influence in the region,” Dempsey said at a news conference at China’s Ministry of National Defense. “In fact, we believe it would be our absence that would be destabilizing in the region, not our presence.”
If the preferences of Chinese moviegoers continue to shift to domestic releases — ticket sales for American movies in China fell 65 percent, to about $200 million in Q1 2013 — China will maintain control of its own film market just as Hollywood was ready to seize it.
Current and former officials said the offensive shift turned on two developments: new intelligence showing the Chinese military directing cyberspying campaigns, and a sudden change in U.S. companies’ willingness to acknowledge Chinese cyberincursions.
The arrests of four activists have both infuriated and disappointed reformers and human rights advocates, who say the crackdown bodes ill for Mr. Xi’s widely trumpeted war on graft.
While many have praised the government for its swift response, growing anger among some underscores the government’s challenge, magnified by the fact that Sichuan bore the brunt of a 7.9 earthquake in 2008 that killed nearly 70,000 people.
Life has not been fair for 50-year-old Lu Jingkang, who lost her teenage daughter in the 7.0-magnitude earthquake that hit Yaan on April 20, 2013. Barely five years earlier, she lost her son in the other catastrophic Sichuan earthquake, in Wenchuan.
The Schwarzman Scholars program will pay all expenses for 200 students each year from around the world for a one-year master’s program at Tsinghua University in Beijing.
