China: After the Killer Quake

By Simon Elegant/Beijing, With Austin Ramzy/Dujiangyan

Zhang Xuede stands near what was once the city of Dujiangyan's Xinjian elementary school, surrounded by mud, debris, twisted metal and slabs of concrete. The 70-year-old has kept vigil for the better part of a day after the school was flattened by the May 12 earthquake. He's looking for his grandson but not really expecting to find him. "After the quake hit, I ran to the school and started removing rubble," Zhang says. "I uncovered several children. Some were dead, some still alive. But I couldn't find my grandson." Unlike many others waiting in the steady drizzle, Zhang seems to have accepted that his grandson probably won't make it out alive. When a neighbor asks about the boy, Zhang replies flatly, "He's dead."

That awful realization awaits hundreds of thousands of Chinese as time inexorably runs out for those trapped under the rubble of the 7.9-magnitude quake that rocked the densely populated Sichuan province. Two days after the first shock, the official death toll had risen to 15,000--and was certain to soar, making it the country's worst disaster since a 1976 quake in the northeastern town of Tangshan killed at least 240,000.

For most of China's long history, natural disasters have been viewed as both portents of change and tests of the government's "mandate of heaven." Many Chinese point out that Mao Zedong died only months after the Tangshan quake. The May 12 quake is being discussed in similar terms in Internet forums, restaurants and tea shops, often generating an inchoate anxiety about possible calamities to come or punishment for past wrongs. Some find a grim significance in the fact that it occurred at the boundary of China and Tibet--where military intervention in demonstrations against Beijing's rule resulted in bloodshed in March, sparking global protests that sullied China's image ahead of the Olympic Games. Others point to a string of recent calamities--a destructive snowstorm, an outbreak of disease that killed dozens of children, a fatal train accident--as evidence of some kind of heavenly displeasure.

China's Communist Party leaders now face another stern test: to show its citizens and the world that the government can cope with a horrific disaster. Keenly aware of the opprobrium heaped on Burma's rulers for their callous and incompetent handling of the killer cyclone earlier this month, Beijing will want to demonstrate that it has "the capability and readiness to handle an emergency like this," says Huang Jing, a China scholar at the National University of Singapore. Swift and transparent handling of the tragedy would also mark another step in Beijing's evolution from an unfeeling regime that suppressed bad news--as it tried to do with the SARS outbreak in 2003--to one more responsive to the needs of its people.

President Hu Jintao called for an "all-out" response, and the government rallied some 100,000 relief workers, including military, police and medical teams. Premier Wen Jiabao flew to Sichuan, and state-owned television showed him rallying rescue forces, even venturing into the ruins to urge victims still trapped in the rubble to "hold on a little longer." It's hard to know how much the tragedy will change China, but this much is certain: with the media allowed unprecedented freedom to report the humanitarian effort, the Chinese will be able to judge their leaders' performance as never before.

In Dujiangyan, where buildings are now just heaps of brick and concrete and corpses lie on the sidewalk, the rescue operation resembles an army assault. Military vehicles, ambulances and mobile kitchens are everywhere. Soldiers search for survivors in the debris and step in to control emotional crowds of victims' relatives. Through the night, loudspeaker-equipped trucks cruised the streets, appealing for calm: "The State Council, the Central Committee, the Sichuan, Chengdu and Dujiangyan governments are trying their best to help. Earthquakes are not something that mankind can avoid." But relief operations can still be bungled, and Beijing knows it can't afford that this time.

After the Quake For continuing coverage of the disaster zone in China, including dispatches and photos, visit time.com

With reporting by Lin Yang/Dujiangyan