MIANYANG, China – With the death toll from this week's earthquake rising rapidly, China made a sharp departure from past diplomatic practice yesterday, seeking disaster relief experts and heavy equipment needed for rescue operations from neighbors it has long shunned as rivals or renegades.
Reuters
Members of a Taiwanese search and rescue squad in Taipei held a ceremony yesterday before joining the international earthquake relief effort in China. Taiwan sent three teams to China.
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Officials asked a longtime rival, Japan, to send 60 earthquake rescue experts, the first such team it has taken from a foreign country during the current crisis and one of the few relief missions China has ever accepted from abroad. They also accepted help from three rescue teams from Taiwan, the self-governing island with which China has long had tense relations.
The decision to seek outside help reflects the fact that the search for survivors of Monday's massive earthquake and the struggle to accommodate tens of thousands of displaced people from the mountainous region around the epicenter of the quake are too much for China to handle alone, even after it mobilized 130,000 army soldiers and medics for relief work.
But the selective invitations to Japan and Taiwan – some foreign nations that have offered aid have been told their services are not needed – may also show that Beijing sees disaster relief as a tactical tool to improve ties with neighbors and soften its international image ahead of the Olympic Games in August.
Meanwhile, Western experts were looking for signs that the earthquake caused damage to any Chinese nuclear facilities, releasing radioactive materials. China's main centers for designing, making and storing nuclear arms lie in the shattered earthquake zone.
A senior U.S. federal official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the United States was using spy satellites and other means to try to monitor the sprawling nuclear plants. “There appear to be no immediate concerns,” the official said.
Nonetheless, “it's potentially a serious issue,” said Hans Kristensen, a nuclear arms expert at the Federation of American Scientists, a private group in Washington. “Radioactive materials could be released if there's damage.”
China began building the plants in the 1960s, calculating their remote locations would make them less vulnerable to enemy attack.
China yesterday asked the United States for satellite images of quake-stricken Sichuan province to help locate victims and identify seriously damaged roads and infrastructure, U.S. and Chinese officials said.
The request, hand-delivered to the State Department by a Chinese Embassy official, seeks high-resolution imagery of the region surrounding the south-central Chinese city of Chengdu, officials told Reuters.
China is still struggling to provide humanitarian aid to tens of thousands of homeless people even as it tries to ramp up search-and-rescue efforts for 40,000 buried or missing people scattered across remote villages in the serpentine valleys of Sichuan province.
Officials estimated yesterday that the death toll, at nearly 20,000, could rise to 50,000. Doctors say those who are alive but still buried cannot survive much longer, yet many of the troops involved in rescue efforts appear to have little training in disaster relief and lack proper tools and equipment.
Yesterday, in the devastated county seat of Beichuan, thousands of People's Liberation Army soldiers stood around with little to do. Some languidly picked at the rubble with their hands, having no power tools to drill or saw through debris.
Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, who is being portrayed in the Chinese media as exercising minute-to-minute supervision of the relief effort, sent 100 more helicopters to ferry supplies and rescue workers into areas inaccessible by road.
Wen also issued a detailed request for heavy equipment to clear mountain roads. The request included thousands of pieces of earth-moving equipment, mechanized hammers, shovels and cranes, as well as satellite communications technology. A Foreign Ministry spokesman said yesterday that China had received pledges of $100 million in international disaster aid and $10 million in relief materials.
The three Taiwanese groups invited to participate in relief operations are the Red Cross and two Buddhist organizations without government ties. One of the Buddhist groups, Tzu Chi, has been granted permission for two relief flights directly into Chengdu, the capital of earthquake-stricken Sichuan province.
One Chinese relief official called the invitations to a relatively small number of overseas teams “rescue diplomacy.” China has been eager to secure international good will in what has so far been a trying diplomatic year for the country, with crises involving Tibet, human rights and pressure to reduce support for the Sudanese government.
Improving relations with Japan and Taiwan are high priorities. Chinese President Hu Jintao just completed a visit to Tokyo, the first by a top Chinese leader in a decade, which some analysts expect could speed a thaw in sometimes hostile political ties between the Pacific powers.
In Taiwan, Ma Ying-jeou, the Kuomintang leader, became president in March, replacing the independence-leaning government of Chen Shui-bian and vowing to improve ties. China appears eager to show he can succeed.
“This is of course very meaningful politically,” said a Chinese relief official in Shanghai, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “It means we're opening up and merging with international society, including the area of rescue efforts. The biggest news is that Japanese are allowed into China. We're in the big family of rescue efforts now.”
Whatever the diplomatic goals, Sichuan needs foreign help. The earthquake, which had a magnitude of 7.9, devastated entire counties, destroying an estimated 4 million homes, rendering roads impassable and leaving as many as 10 million people dependent on relief aid.
One of them will be a teenage girl whose crushed legs were amputated yesterday, the only way doctors could pull her alive from the wreckage of her school in Hanwang.
Yang Liu was trapped in what appeared to be a doorway by Monday's quake, near the top of a massive pile of bricks and concrete.
“We saved her,” one of the doctors involved told Reuters.
In Dujiangyan, a 22-year-old woman was pulled to safety after more than three days trapped under debris. Covered in dust and peering out through a small opening, she waved and was interviewed by state television as hard-hatted rescuers worked to free her.
“I was confident that you were coming to rescue me. I'm alive. I'm so happy,” the unnamed woman said on state-run CCTV.
Also needing help will be Yang Jinquan, an 86-year-old who had to hobble over bodies of her neighbors to descend from the mountains and save her life. She ended up in a sports stadium in Mianyang, sleeping on a treadmill and sharing toilets with more than 10,000 other people left homeless.
“There are just so many people here,” said her granddaughter, Liu Ying, 24, one of 12 family members sharing a few dozen square feet of floor space. “What can anyone do?”
Hundreds of thousands of people remain homeless, some crowded into camps like the Nine Continents Stadium where Yang lives, others sleeping in muddy fields high in the mountains of Sichuan province.
Power was restored to most of Sichuan for the first time since the quake, although Beichuan remained without electricity, Xinhua said.
Troops dug burial pits in Luoshui town and black smoke poured from crematorium chimneys elsewhere in central China as priorities began shifting from the hunt for survivors to dealing with the dead.
