Beijing's silence hints at school coverup
By Antoaneta Bezlova
BEIJING - The silence surrounding investigations into why so many schools
collapsed during China's massive earthquake in May suggests Beijing's
reluctance to face up to the fact that the failure of government education
policies is partly to blame for the deaths of thousands of children.
When China dismantled the Mao Zedong legacy of people's communes in the
mid-1980s, the central government in Beijing delegated responsibility for
education funding to local governments. While abdicating its role as a
provider, Beijing at the same time set ambitious targets to reduce illiteracy
and provide
nine years of compulsory education for all by the end of the century.
Poorer places like Sichuan, where the May 12 earthquake struck, struggled to
comply with Beijing targets. Local government coffers were not deep enough to
pay for teachers' salaries and construct new school buildings just as children
of the baby-boom generation were entering the classroom. Money was raised
through bank loans and donations, creating a pile of debts.
The dearth of funds led to cutting corners in school construction and the
so-called "three without" schools emerged in rural areas - classrooms built
without standardized design, without construction supervision and without
quality control.
"We have a saying in our industry that bridges are gold, roads are silver and
schools are worse than scrap iron," said Chang, a construction engineer with
projects in Sichuan province who wants only his surname used. "Contractors make
very little money out of school projects and they often squeeze their profit
from the construction material."
Seismologists and construction experts have pointed to the lack of reinforcing
iron bars in many of the collapsed school buildings and the use of substandard
slab floors.
In Yuquan, a small rural community two hours by car from the provincial capital
Chengdu, the school buildings withstood the magnitude 8.0 earthquake but both
buildings are now fenced and several yellow "danger" signs warn students off.
"There are big cracks in the walls of both buildings and the upper floor of the
primary school's wing is leaning out," said Dai Jinhua, a development worker
with China Youth Development Foundation, which is building temporary
schoolrooms for the 1,600 children in Yuquan.
"These buildings will be destroyed and a new school will be built in three
years," he explained.
The school principal, Peng Bangfa, initially lashed out at foreign media bias
in reporting the negative side of disaster relief, but did say that both
buildings were built with local money. The primary school was constructed in
1984 with money raised by the township. The junior middle school at the back of
the campus came up in 1996 with funds allocated from Mianzhu county, which
administers Yuquan town.
Asked whether the central government supervised the construction of the
buildings, he was defensive. "I was transferred here only six months ago," Peng
said. "I don't know anything about the quality of school construction."
Throughout Sichuan province - one of China's poorest - a countless number of
schools collapsed within minutes of the May 12 temblor. Sichuan education
authorities say the earthquake destroyed 7,000 classrooms. Nearly 10,000
children and teachers were crushed to death or died under the debris.
Ever since the disaster, bereaved parents have tried to pressure local
officials to investigate why so many school buildings collapsed while nearby
apartments and government offices stayed upright. From Dujiangyan city to
Mianzhu and tiny Wufu, parents have marched and begged. They have cried and
threatened to sue the government, hoping to find out the truth about the
tragedy.
"Premier Wen Jiabao said this quake was China's worst natural disaster since
the founding of modern China. I think what makes it so bad is the number of
children that died," said Cai Xinjin, an elderly man who sat in the sun outside
of the local school in Yuquan. At the age of 70, Cai is old enough to remember
other natural calamities but he says he has never before felt such sadness at
the loss of so much young life as with this quake.
After allowing some displays of grief by parents and promising to investigate,
provincial authorities have tried to stifle complaints and avoid public
discussion of the claims of corruption and shoddy construction. Newspapers in
Chengdu have carried articles blaming the ferocity of the earthquake for the
massive scale of destruction and exonerating human behavior as a possible
contributor to the death toll.
China's first reading of the quake's magnitude was reported as 7.9 but later
revised to 8.0. United States-based Incorporated Research Institutions for
Seismology maintains the earthquake measured magnitude 7.9. Nearly 90,000
people are dead or missing in the quake. Some 5 million people are homeless.
Those who have tried to point fingers at the government for mismanaging public
education have been detained and silenced. Zeng Hongling, a retired teacher who
wrote essays decrying the conditions of rural schools and posted them on
overseas websites, was detained in June by Chinese police, according to a human
rights group based in Hong Kong.
Huang Qi, a prominent human rights activist, working with parents of deceased
children to help them launch a legal campaign, was detained in mid-June as
well. He had since been charged with possession of state secrets.
But as early as 2000, Beijing admitted publicly its spending on education was
falling behind and pledged to aggressively expand its financial support for
national schools. According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and
Cultural Organization, in 1999 China was still spending less than 3% of its
gross domestic product on education, compared with the 4.1% spent by the
majority of developing countries.
Beijing's goal of nine-year compulsory education was declared accomplished in
2000 as planned. But the Ministry of Education estimated that by the end of the
same year local governments had accumulated more than 50 billion yuan (US$7.3
billion) in education debts.
What is more, the central government was saddled with a legacy of poorly built
and outright dangerous school buildings.
Between 2001 and 2005, China invested in the reconstruction of more than 60,800
rural schools. In 2001, Beijing also reversed the long-standing policy of
letting local governments fend for themselves and assumed back financial
responsibility for supporting education in poorer areas. But for thousands of
school children in Sichuan that reversal appears to have come too late.
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