The Sichuan quake System Perturbation rumbles on
THOMAS BARNETT
ARTICLE: "Parents' Grief Turns to Rage at Chinese Officials," by Andrew Jacobs, New York Times, 28 May 2008, p. A1.
Stunning pic: CCP boss of Mianzhu, kneeling in street, eyes downcast, in front of mothers holding pics of dead kids, pointing at the faces and screaming at him. He is begging them to abandon their protests, and seems to be failing.
Article says angry parents are lashing out over fact that gov buildings and nearby elite schools withstood quake while their kids die in poorly built public schools.
The usual caution about confronting party bosses evaporates ...
This is not just about the quake, but about people getting used to making more demands over perceived injustices. People start living better and then start expecting more. When they work their asses off to get ahead and then see how elites do better for no good reason, then they get mad and the gloves come off. People's sense of the new minimum standard is everything when it comes to reforms and change: they say to themselves, "Nobody should have to endure this" and whammo! The new minimum standard for decency is undeniable.
And with every perceptible rise in that public-defined new minimum standard, the party's arbitrary power weakens and its responsibility to deliver on heightened expectations grows.
Increasingly, the quake creates a fault line between a pre-disaster and post-disaster China.
With all due disrespect to misguided Sharon Stone, China is getting what it deserves ... not with this tragedy but as a result of it: a more demanding public and a more responsive Party.
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The magic number
The cynic and realist in me has always thought, and responded when asked, that if you get the casualty number below 20, or roughly half the number of the war months, then the question of withdrawal would evaporate.
Seeing the page 6 coverage of 18 deaths in May, that logic seems to be holding nicely.
As I said all along: the only measure is U.S. casualties. Progress or no within Iraq, so long as losses are perceived low, the time line stretches plenty. With reasonable progress, like we're getting, then we're into the very positive dynamic of accumulating time since the last great spasms of civil violence.
In that space we fill up, as much as possible, on economic development, with Enterra working the Kurds in the lead, setting the example for elsewhere.
And so long as our casualties stay low and stability spreads, then time is on our side and it becomes apparent to Iran that they have to start picking sides among the Shia in Iraq, no longer backing all in a hedging strategy.
And then the opportunities emerge, once Bush is gone and Ahmadinejad suffers election defeat.
Nothing overnight, but things progressing nicely, and no matter all the legit negatives you can toss at Petraeus, these are the only wins that matter, and so he gets plenty of credit.
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