Goh Sui Noi, Straits Times 21 Feb 08;
IT WAS a touching story: 30 cold and frightened children stranded on a bus on an icy road for eight days and nights.
They had been left behind in the city of Xiantao in Hubei province, while their parents had gone to the prosperous southern city of Shenzhen in Guangdong province to work.
Their journey began on Jan 24. It should have taken just 15 hours before they were reunited with their parents for the Chinese New Year holidays. The journey turned into a nightmare as their bus got stuck in snowstorm-ravaged roads on the Hunan-Guangdong border.
According to the Hong Kong-based newspaper Oriental Daily, the children were discovered by a reporter, who put them on a southbound train.
But was their ordeal necessary? Were the ordeals of the more than 100 million Chinese hit by the snowstorms that began on Jan 10 necessary?
These are questions that some Chinese are asking as the country works to restore normalcy and begins to add up the costs of the worst natural disaster to hit China since the floods of 1998, which affected 180 million and killed 4,000 people.
The winter storms this year affected 21 provinces and regions, killed 107 people - some believe that the figure is higher - and caused direct economic losses of 111.1 billion yuan (S$22 billion).
The storms have brought untold suffering to millions, including migrant workers stranded for days at railway stations and on the road, amid breakdowns in the transport network. About 5.8 million train passengers were left stranded during the worst of the crisis between Jan 25 and Jan 31.
Millions more were plunged into darkness because power grids were downed by heavy snow and ice. Chenzhou, a city of four million in Hunan province, was without electricity or water for about two weeks.
Many of those affected were stoic. A stranded migrant worker by the name of Hong told the Associated Press: 'I think you can say the government is doing an okay job. What can you do? It's the weather.'
But some think the crisis reflected not just the weaknesses of China's infrastructure, but also the government's lack of preparedness.
China's transport system has not kept pace with its phenomenal economic growth. Its railways carry 25 per cent of the world's railway traffic on just 6 per cent of the world's track length, according to the World Bank.
As for the country's power infrastructure, power cables in the regions affected by the winter storms were too fine to withstand the heavy snowfalls and ice build-up. Power lines broke and transmission towers toppled over.
Adding to the electricity woes, coal-fired power plants fell short of fuel as transport networks broke down. Many of these stations had only three days' supply of coal instead of the 18 days' to 20 days' stockpile they should carry.
Deutsche Bank's chief economist for Greater China, Dr Ma Jun, told The Straits Times that the infrastructure system could not cope with the scale of disruption that took place.
To make matters worse, the government did not have a disaster response system that could be activated in the event of any emergency. The result was that there was a lack of coordination in disaster relief efforts, as no one knew who was responsible.
Some Beijing-based commentators also slammed the government for its slowness in responding to the disaster. They drew parallels between this and the Sars epidemic in 2003 when the government admitted to the crisis and swung into action months after the first cases appeared in Guangdong province and after the epidemic had spread to Beijing, killing hundreds.
In this instance, as early as December last year, the China Meteorological Administration (CMA) had sent a report to the relevant authorities warning that vigilance was needed as snowstorms were anticipated.
CMA deputy administrator Xu Xiaofeng told Central China Television earlier this month that he and his colleagues had noted that the winter was unusually warm, the La Nina phenomenon was forming in the Pacific, and that these two phenomena, in conjunction, could lead to colder weather than usual.
But even as the first snowstorms hit between Jan 10 and Jan 16, the central and local authorities did not seem to pay much heed. The Chinese media, noted one commentator, initially reported casually on the storms. The media's light touch was possibly a result of strict media controls.
This meant that people did not get enough information on the severity of the storms. If the parents of the 30 children had known about the poor condition of the roads, would they have sent for them still?
It was not until the chaotic scenes of millions of passengers stranded at the major transport centres of the big coastal cities hit TV screens, that the government started paying closer attention. It was not until Jan 29, nearly three weeks after the first storms hit, that top Chinese leaders held their first meeting on the disaster.
They decided to mobilise the military. Nearly 800,000 troops and 1.96 million militia and army reservists were sent to clear roads, repair railway and power lines, evacuate people and deliver supplies.
It was also on Jan 29 that the government started to tell would-be travellers to stay where they were until the transport situation improved.
The economic fallout of the winter storms is not expected to be severe. Deutsche Bank has cut this year's growth forecast for China by 0.4 of a percentage point - from 10.4 per cent to 10 per cent.
Dr Ma warns that the inflation rate may go up as large swathes of winter crops have been destroyed. A spiral effect may occur if shortages prompt panic buying.
For the long term, China needs to strengthen its infrastructure and put in place a disaster response system that is flexible enough to respond to different disasters, the economist said.
Right now, the Chinese government has been reactive, putting in place a specific response system for a particular disaster after it occurs - flood control systems after the 1998 floods, a Sars response system after the Sars epidemic of 2003, and so on.
For a government that seeks legitimacy through responsiveness to the people's needs, it has to do better than just react (slowly, to boot) to disasters after they have occurred.
