I take exception to your statement that “most Chinese authorities” are against increased transparency. I can’t agree. I believe the majority of both officials in government and members of the Communist Party would like to see a cleaner, transparent government. I believe many are working in that direction.

See this for one example of policies intended to enable exactly that:

http://blog.foolsmountain.com/?p=81

This tells me: China does not have much of an institutionalized civil society base because this is not encouraged by the authorities — who would want to share power with someone else?

Holding the woman responsible is like killing the messenger. It doesn’t solve the underlying problem.

Very true. One story/rumor going around is that buyers for a charity (perhaps the Red Cross) attempted to buy medical goods worth 10k RMB, but demanded receipts showing 50k RMB. The representatives could then pocket the 40k difference.

This kind of gray-color corruption is common in the Chinese business environment in general. You can’t have the sort of clarity that the Chinese people are demanding (and deserve) unless we overhaul the whole system. I hope this helps that process.

In general, the item-by-item procurement and spending scrutiny is subject to auditing only, but not to the general public. The problem is, Chinese just doesn’t trust the state auditing service. It’s probably wise for the Chinese Red Cross to hire an outside (meaning Western) auditor. But even that won’t be enough to satisfy many Chinese because auditing doesn’t prevent under-table discount deals. They would have to overhaul the whole Chinese business environment to be trustworthy.

One other problem is that many Chinese are just not familiar with the pracitce of Red Cross and NGOs, and uncomfortable with the executive charge which is said to be at 6.5% for Chinese Red Cross. Thee charge is banned by government executive order for this time.

“But even there shoddy construction wasn’t “widespread”… which is part of the reason people are convinced corruption and cost-cutting is responsible for the few buildings that did collapse”
I’m not sure what you mean by this considering the Xinhua article.

My reference to urban areas was referring to cities/towns where buildings actually collapsed. Cities like Beijing and Shanghai, which also felt the quake, were unaffected and I was not considering them in my post. My impression of Chengdu was that they were relatively unscathed despite it’s proximity to the epicenter while other towns were affected disproportionately. For me, this suggest something is happening (corruption, shoddy construction, lack of regulations, whatever) because all things being equal, Chengdu should be in ruins or on the flip side, towns like Beichuan should still be standing. Of course, we will wait and see what the investigation brings up. Preliminary inspections of collapsed building (according to a MSNBC video) done by engineers reveal shoddy construction so that is why I’m leaning in that direction.

http://www.mitbbs.com/article_t/ChinaNews/31547300.html

Five schools collapsed in Dujiangyan, but most of these were built before 1990. One of the companies implicated in the building went bankrupt back in 2000, because many of the residential buildings it built were seen as being very poor in quality.

I really see this as a sad combination of poverty and negligence.

However, it was my impression that shoddy construction was widespread in “urban” areas hit by the earthquake, and this is the distinction I want to draw.

That largely isn’t true. Keep in mind that the very, very densely populated metropolitan area of Chengdu (capital of Sichuan province) was only about 50 miles from the epicenter of the earthquake. But casualties in Chengdu were kept low; I’m not aware of any complete collapses in Chengdu at all.

In my not very informed opinion, the only questionable collapses were of a few specific buildings in the county-level town of Dujiangyan. But even there shoddy construction wasn’t “widespread”… which is part of the reason people are convinced corruption and cost-cutting is responsible for the few buildings that did collapse.

I shouldn’t say its purely a money thing; it’s also a political priority thing. The only problem is that when you have little money, your priorities are more exposed. Definitely, I think China will have learned a lesson from this in terms of prioritizing. Government building collapses aren’t exactly a good thing, but you simply can’t have schools collapse.

Many Chinese over the past week remembered a deadly fire in Xinjiang about 5-10 years back. The story goes, a fire started in a theater where the school-children were putting on a show. As the evacuation started, those in charge held the children back and repeatedly said: “let the officials go first”… allowing political leaders in the audience to leave first. Unfortunately, many of the children held back never left that theater. The analogy to government buildings still standing in many Sichuan counties should be obvious.

That story is notable not only because of the political story, but because it happened during a period in China in which it seemed deadly fires were happening every other month. I remembered opening up newspapers and reading about deadly fires of huge scale in nightclubs, internet cafes (one especially case in Beijing itself), movie theaters… everywhere. Fire safety doors and windows in these places were usually found locked to prevent people from sneaking in.

But now…? These stories are far and few between. And it’s because the political leadership in areas where these deadly fires occurred were heavily punished by Beijing, meaning much greater priority is now placed on fire safety. I think the same will happen nation-wide now in terms of school-building safety.

However, it was my impression that shoddy construction was widespread in “urban” areas hit by the earthquake, and this is the distinction I want to draw. In these cases, the resources ARE there(e.g. money) and we are talking about extremely dense populations where the risk of mass fatalities is high if there is building collapse. In these cases, there should be investigations on possible cases of bribery. I understand that the local governments probably don’t have the resources to check every building, or even if they should enforce the building codes for peasant farmers who can’t afford the improvements, but they are responsible to at least check high rise buildings like schools and apartments.

And this issue effects the entire country, look at the cost of human life, cost of the relief efforts, rebuilding cost, opportunity cost etc. It’s enormous and growing, and I believe it would have been much lower if more buildings were up to code and still standing. According to government newspapers, public spending will be cut by 5% because of the earthquake damage. Tackling the issue of building codes and possible corrupt officials should take priority and should be an issue for the nation.

As for the red cross issue, let me clarify my position. I think it’s premature to assume corruption when there is no verifiable evidence to suggest it(correct me if i’m wrong). However, if we are talking about transparency in spending, then that’s something I agree with.