Wow, Helen, I really have to disagree with you on this one. You're saying that the Chinese government is happy to have the heat taken off them about Tibet and to be given a chance to look like heroes, even at the cost of probably 50,000 lives (okay, fine, not all of them were Han, but still)?
No, sorry, you are far too cynical. You mistake Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao for the likes of Mao, Stalin, or Hussein. Sure, they are making the best of the situation in order to come out looking as competent and caring as possible. What choice do they have? And they are doing a remarkably good job of it. But from what I understand, they initially sent out a blanket order to all news agencies to stay away from the earthquake zone (except for agencies that were directly controlled by the government) -- an order which was totally blown off.
And when they realized that they could not control the media situation, they threw everything they had to make the rescue effort look as good as possible.
While the rescue effort has been conducted relatively well under the circumstances (especially in comparison to how the snow storm fiasco earlier this year was dealt with, not to mention Katrina), there have been some criticisms that have already reared their heads but are being tabled for now to handle the immediate crisis. There is potential for a lot of anger to explode after this initial critical period of finding, feeding and sheltering survivors, stabilizing the injured, and preventing epidemics. As a guy I know in Chengdu put it, the Chinese have a saying:
秋後算賬 Qiū hòu suàn zhàng: "After the harvest, we'll get the numbers straight."
No, the government was already making the Tibet issue recede quietly, by discreetly reengaging (even if only for show) representatives of the Dalai Lama, and clamping down on the nationalist, anti-Tibetan, xenophobic rhetoric in the media and on the net.
The Chinese central cadres are not as sociopathic as your cynicism implies them to be. I wouldn't even accuse Bush of considering 9/11 "manna from Heaven", no matter how much it improved his popularity. A language is a dialect with an army and navy.
You must remember I come from the country where a senior advisor to the Government, Jo Moore, suggested that 9/11/2001 was a "good day to bury bad news" and that departments should find all the rotten stuff and let it out that day. That's the difference between us and elites. Whilst we mere plebs were reeling from shock and horror, they were planning and calculating for advantage. It would actually be insulting to the Chinese govt to suggest they are less capable than the British. keep to the Fen Causeway
