Introduction
This article explores the alternative narrative of the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake presented in the essay ‘Longmen Mountain, please bear witness for the children of Beichuan’ (hereafter ‘Longmen Mountain’) by the environmental activist Tan Zuoren. I argue that the ‘Longmen Mountain’ essay is not only an attempt to narrate an alternative version of the story of the Wenchuan, or the 5.12,Footnote 1 earthquake, but also to present a vision of an alternative future for Chinese society. The building blocks for this alternative future would be finding a balance between humans and nature, respect for minorities, and responsible rule. The Communist Party (CCP), however, would stay in power as a reformed ruler.
Natural disasters have played an important role in traditional Chinese perceptions of justified rule, the use of power, and the state of society. They have been seen as indicators of an imbalance in the cosmic order, and the roots of that imbalance were usually traced to human behaviour and problems in society, although the higher powers, such as Heaven, could themselves sometimes be unpredictable.Footnote 2 In addition, contemporary social scientific research maintains that natural disasters function as great revealers of the social and political relations in a country and their underpinnings in society.Footnote 3
As Davies and Xu both argue, the Wenchuan earthquake was a rupture in the day-to-day functioning of society. In the carefully scripted, patriotic run-up to the Beijing Olympic Games it offered an opening not only for civil society activity, but also for a critical examination of several socio-political questions.Footnote 4 Even though the Chinese public generally judged the government's relief efforts favourably, critical voices began to appear and, despite their swift suppression, a sense of dissatisfaction has remained.Footnote 5 Against this background, analyses of the criticisms directed at the Chinese government highlight contentious socio-political questions and their alternative answers or solutions.
Seven years after the disaster, some explanations of the political meaning of the 5.12 earthquake have been offered. Yin and Wang describe the media representation of the disaster as a ‘people-centred myth’,Footnote 6 and Teets, Roney, Shieh and Deng, and Xu all explore the earthquake's effects on civil society.Footnote 7 For Xu, the Chinese government and the CCP were able to strengthen their moral legitimacy,Footnote 8 whereas Schneider and Hwang claim that the CCP used the narratives about the Wenchuan earthquake to educate the population about the Party's irreplaceable role and the importance of the market economy, emphasizing values such as patriotism, self-sacrifice, and a revamped Confucian idea of benevolent rule. They argue that the discourse on the Wenchuan disaster, which comprised various regulating factors, has become a central part of this mix, not only because of the opportunity that the event offered to further increase performance-based legitimacy, but also because it tied into a broader disaster discourse that drew on pre-modern Chinese ideals of authorized rule.Footnote 9 What has so far been largely ignored in the research on the Wenchuan disaster are those critical voices that have attempted to construct an alternative and much less victorious story. I suggest that it is possible to see the narratives on the Wenchuan earthquake as both simply stories about an individual disaster and as a battle over how society and politics in China should be—and should work.
I will begin this article by discussing the background to Tan Zuoren's essay, describing the social atmosphere in the immediate aftermath of the disaster, and assessing the earthquake's impact on Beichuan. Next, I will introduce and analyse the main themes of Tan's ‘Longmen Mountain’ essay. The article closes with some concluding remarks.
The political aftershocks
At 2.28 pm on 12 May 2008, a massive earthquake struck China's southwestern region. Altogether ten provinces were affected, with Sichuan, Shaanxi, and Gansu suffering the most damage. The destruction was overwhelming.Footnote 10 According to official records released on 25 August 2008, 69,226 people died, a further 374,643 people were injured, and 17,923 were missing and presumed dead.Footnote 11 At least 15 million people were evacuated from their homes and more than five million were left homeless. An estimated 5.36 million buildings collapsed and more than 21 million buildings were damaged in Sichuan and in parts of Chongqing, Gansu, Hubei, Shaanxi, and Yunnan. The total economic loss was estimated at ¥ 800 billion.Footnote 12
After the earthquake's tremors had receded, another ‘quake’ shook China—this time, fortunately, a more positive one. In the immediate aftermath of the disaster, the media was allowed to report from the affected areas in an unprecedentedly open manner and, for a while, even highly critical reports were published. In fact, the Central Party Propaganda Department had banned journalists from the earthquake zone, but this verbal ban was rendered obsolete by the Central Politburo, who instructed the Xinhua News Agency and China Central Television to report on the disaster in a ‘timely, accurate, open and transparent’ manner.Footnote 13 By 15 May, when the scale of destruction had become apparent, the Central Propaganda Department prohibited any detailed reporting on school collapses, but the ban was only enforced in June. Before that, there was time for several critical articles to be written, and even though most of them appeared online, they were published by established commercial media outlets such as the Southern Metropolis Daily, the Southern Weekend, and even by Party mouthpieces such as the People's Daily and Xinhua.Footnote 14 Eventually, the CCP became alarmed by the volume of stories challenging its victory narrative and resorted to the old tactic of making the problem disappear by silencing the critics.Footnote 15
As Xu has noted, this short period of relative openness was the first time in the PRC's history that the Chinese public was intensely exposed to media coverage of scenes of large-scale disaster and suffering, an experience that generated widespread sympathy for the victims and survivors. Individuals, companies, and civil society organizations volunteered to help the affected population by donating money, blood, and goods, and, in many cases, by going to the disaster area.Footnote 16 Generally, the Chinese leadership and the state-controlled media wanted to paint a rosy picture of rescue and reconstruction,Footnote 17 but not everyone was convinced.
Three large surveys conducted by Norwegian Fafo Institute of Applied International Studies and the Chinese Academy of Science and Technology for Development (CASTED) showed almost 100 per cent satisfaction with the central and provincial governments’ handling of the reconstruction, whereas fewer than three in four people were satisfied with the actions of the local government.Footnote 18 It is, however, necessary to evaluate these findings against the backdrop of the Chinese people's general reluctance to criticize the central leadership, especially in this case, because the government had commissioned the surveys. In contrast, the survey conducted by the School of Social Development and Public Policy at Beijing Normal University revealed that 20.32 per cent of the victim-survivors (N=1,949) thought that the aid was distributed ‘unfairly’, 45.20 per cent selected the ‘neutral’ response, and only 34.48 per cent of the respondents thought that it was ‘fair’.Footnote 19
Zhang suggests that one important factor behind this perceived unfairness was that the methods used to distribute relief materials were unclear as local officials used varying criteria. The respondents were the most satisfied when they perceived that the aid was distributed based on need or the material losses experienced. On the other hand, the least fairness was felt by those who thought that the distribution of relief materials favoured those who had power, connections, or wealth, or who complained loudly, and by those who saw that aid was simply given on a ‘first come, first served’ basis.Footnote 20
However, the main focal point of dissatisfaction and anger was the collapse of a large number of school buildings and the deaths of thousands of students. The exact number of student victims is not known and the figures vary, from the official death toll of 5,335 children to the estimate released by Reuters news agency soon after the disaster which put the number of deaths as high as 9,000. This estimate was based on figures released in the Xinhua and local media reports.Footnote 21 Parents who had lost their children soon noticed that in many cases the local school was flattened, while other buildings nearby stood firm or suffered only minor damage. They demanded answers from the authorities, who promised a full investigation; in the end, however, the official report attributed the damage to the force of the earthquake, thus sidestepping any suspicions or evidence of corruption and poor-quality construction materials.Footnote 22
As well as the journalists’ attention, the plight of the grieving parents also received the sympathy of activists, such as the Sichuanese human rights defender Huang Qi, the Chengdu-based environmentalist Tan Zuoren, and artist-activist Ai Weiwei. By June 2008, Huang had already published his own investigation into one collapsed school; he was later sentenced to three years in prison for ‘illegal possession of state secrets’.Footnote 23 In addition, Tan Zuoren and Ai Weiwei both launched research projects on the school collapses. They used the internet and recruited local assistants to distribute survey questionnaires throughout the earthquake-affected area. The aim of both of these projects was to collect the names of deceased students. Tan also collected information on how satisfied parents were with the investigation carried out by the local government and the compensation they had received.Footnote 24
Tan published his investigation report in March 2009. It stated that 5,522 students had died in, and 78 were missing from, 64 school buildings. The investigation covered ten counties and cities, and over 80 towns and townships in the main disaster region.Footnote 25 In May 2010, Ai Weiwei published a list of 5,206 names of children who had died in the earthquake, although a year earlier he had reported that his investigation had already confirmed 7,605 deaths.Footnote 26 The results published by the two activists are preliminary, but they suggest that the actual number of student deaths is higher than the official figure.
After publishing the names of students who had died, Tan Zuoren was sentenced to five years in prison. According to Tan's friend and China Media ProjectFootnote 27 associate Ai Xiaoming, he went to the disaster area several times to listen to and collect the stories of parents who had lost their children.Footnote 28 The area of special interest for Tan was the Beichuan Qiang autonomous county, particularly the county seat with the same name. Beichuan county is located in the mountainous rural area of Sichuan. Before the earthquake, in 2007, almost 60 per cent of its then 160,528 inhabitants belonged to minority nationalities. The largest group was the Qiang, who comprised 56.7 per cent of the whole population.Footnote 29 The county seat, tightly squeezed between mountains and the Jian River, suffered almost complete destruction in the 5.12 earthquake, with approximately 80 per cent of its buildings collapsing and at least half of its population perishing, including 1,300 students.Footnote 30
Approximately eight years after the disaster, in 2016, the population had increased to beyond the pre-disaster level and the county had 238,588 inhabitants. The ethnic composition of Beichuan had, however, changed dramatically: only 37.92 per cent of the population now belong to minority groups, while the Han Chinese make up 62.22 per cent of the residents. The number of Qiang has dropped by over 5,000 from 91,019 to 85,989.Footnote 31 The reasons behind these changes include the high mortality rates among the ethnic minorities in the 5.12 earthquake, the incorporation of several new villages into Beichuan county's jurisdiction,Footnote 32 and possibly Han immigration following new development and tourist industry projects.
In addition to his previously mentioned activism, Tan wrote and then posted online his essay ‘Longmen Mountain’ a few months after his first visit to Beichuan. Arguably, this text encouraged and inspired at least some parents to speak up on behalf of their lost children by, for example, writing open letters to the authorities.Footnote 33 Against this background I suggest that Tan Zuoren's ‘Longmen Mountain’ essay is a useful window through which to view the critical voices and narratives concerning the Wenchuan earthquake policies. Tan bases his critique on a historical narrative and connects it to broader social issues, while also offering several concrete suggestions on how to improve Chinese society and its governing practices. His can be considered a voice from the grassroots whose opinions and visions are rooted in his practical experiences and observations. I will now move on to discuss Tan's ‘Longmen Mountain’ essay and to analyse its themes.
‘Longmen Mountain, please bear witness for the children of Beichuan’Footnote 34
Tan Zuoren's motives for writing the ‘Longmen Mountain’ essay were not only social and political but also deeply personal. Indeed, it seems that writing and publishing the essay was an exercise in atonement (something that Tan also demands from the Chinese authorities) almost as much as it was about seeking justice for the victims and victim-survivors of the 5.12 earthquake. At the beginning of the essay, Tan explains his own relationship with Beichuan and his motivation for writing and publishing the text. Two years earlier Tan had been invited to Beichuan to help in the planning of tourism services and activities related to Da Yu's (Emperor Yu the Great) birth village and so-called Red tourism.Footnote 35 The invitation from the local cultural figures included a request for him to look into the conflict between local residents and officials regarding the construction of the Xuanping power plant and Kuzhu dam.
Because of his busy schedule, Tan politely declined the invitation. According to his own testimony, after the earthquake, Tan went to Beichuan feeling regretful about his earlier refusal. He promised to write about what had happened and demand justice for the people of Beichuan. However, for two months he found this impossible to achieve. The finished essay portrays an image of a guilt-ridden man who feels he has disrespected and disappointed the Beichuanese, and that his silence has been shameful. Thus, Tan declares that ‘[e]ven if lifting my pen means death, I do not complain, I do not regret’.Footnote 36
In the following sections, I will introduce two dominant themes in Tan's essay, namely the tragedy of being from an ethnic minority, and the combination of respectful rule with finding a balance between human beings and nature as an alternative way to govern.
The tragedy of ethnic minority groups
One of the main themes in Tan's essay is Beichuan's identity as a Qiang ethnic minority town and the centre of the Beichuan Qiang autonomous county. Tan constructs a narrative of the town and its residents, showing their continuous suffering and neglect since the early twentieth century. According to official records, Beichuan was established in 564 ad during the Northern Zhou dynasty. The Tang dynasty created another county, Shiquan, inside the original Beichuan county in 634 ad, and then in 651 ad merged Beichuan county with Shiquan. The Republic of China, however, changed the county's name back to Beichuan in 1914, because there had been a Shiquan county in Shaanxi province since before 566 ad. After 1953, Beichuan has been under the jurisdiction of, first, Mianyang prefecture and, then, Mianyang city. In 1988, the PRC government granted Beichuan the status of being an autonomous Qiang ethnic minority county, but the decision was not implemented until 2003.Footnote 37
According to Tan, Beichuan suffered heavy losses during the civil war, not only because most of the young people left with the Red Army, but also because the Sichuan Army invaded the town after the communists left and vengefully massacred the inhabitants for their collaboration. After the killing, famine, pestilence, and infectious diseases followed, and the size of the population decreased dramatically. Tan claims that the CCP and the Red Army never apologized for what Beichuan went through, although in 1953 the town was recognized as an ‘old revolutionary base’ and its Red martyrs were honoured.
Tan argues that Beichuan's most recent tragedy began with the moving of the county town in the early 1950s. The new location of Beichuan was squeezed between the mountains and the Jian River, and this would prove to be deadly in the 2008 earthquake. The seismic activity in the area and several milder earthquakes, especially after 1976, increased the residents’ worries and they demanded that the county seat be relocated to its original situation or to another, safer place. Although these efforts proved unsuccessful, in the 1990s, the town's administrative quarters were moved to the other side of the river. Almost no one in the old side of the town survived the 2008 earthquake and the subsequent rock- and landslide.Footnote 38
After Tan wrote his essay, the Beichuan county seat was relocated once again. New Beichuan, also known as Yongchang town, is located around 27 kilometres from the old county seat, beyond the mountains. Seen from a mini-bus speeding through the main streets, the new town looks almost strangely neat, organized, and too quiet to be a living Chinese town. The ruins of Old Beichuan have been preserved and turned into an outdoor museum. One or two kilometres from the ruins are several resettlement communities, the Beichuan Earthquake Memorial Hall, and the so-called special commercial plaza where all kinds of tourist merchandise—from water bottles and food to clothes—are sold.Footnote 39
The power of words to shape perceptions and social reality is apparent in Tan's questioning of the decision to call the 5.12 earthquake the ‘Wenchuan earthquake’, which he considers a deliberate attempt to direct attention away from a neglected minority community. According to him, Wenchuan was not the area that suffered the most serious damage in the earthquake, even though the state media purposefully gave that impression.Footnote 40 In contrast, Beichuan, where the implementation of anti-seismic measures had failed, suffered near complete destruction even though the then-county seat was over 100 km from the earthquake's epicentre. Thus, Tan argues that it would be more appropriate to call 5.12, the ‘Beichuan earthquake’. He also felt that ‘Longmen Mountain earthquake’, based on the fault where the seismic activity took place; or the ‘Great Sichuan earthquake’, based on the main disaster area; or ‘Yingxiu earthquake’, based on the epicentre's location, would be acceptable.
The emphasis on Beichuan's Qiang identity and suggestions that neglectful policies were connected with disdainful attitudes towards minorities are risky rhetorical choices in the PRC, where the official discourse emphasizes the happy coexistence of 56 ethnic groups in one country. The impact of this argument is intensified through the historical narrative that emphasizes the natural beauty of the area, on the one hand, and seismicity and the socio-political calamities that Beichuan has faced, on the other. The Beichuanese are portrayed as good people who struggle in vain against natural and political hazards. In many ways this resembles the everyday (Western) understanding of the meaning of ‘tragedy’—that is, that bad things happen to people who do not deserve them, which Catherine Lu describes as the ‘tragedies of virtuous or innocent suffering’.Footnote 41
Moreover, Tan himself also describes the events as a ‘tragedy’; he uses both beiju (悲剧), meaning ‘sad drama’, and canju (惨剧), which means ‘tragedy’, ‘atrocity’, or ‘calamity’. I argue that emphasizing the ‘tragic’ character of the events is likely to have been a conscious choice. Even though the literary genre of tragedy is somewhat culture-specific, in its everyday meaning, tragedy has an emotional appeal that crosses cultural boundaries and makes the narrative and its message easy to receive. However, Tan seems to be using the concept of tragedy in a manner that mixes elements of the (near) universal everyday understanding of the word and more specific traits of the Chinese beiju as a form of literature and drama.
According to Wallace, it has been argued that there is no tradition of tragedy in Chinese literature. In classical Yuan and Ming dynasty plays, for example, characters do not display inner conflict and do not allow unrestrained passions to consume them. Moreover, humans are depicted as only one small element in the cosmos, part of a world that is, in essence, just and benevolent. Characters often suffer from unjust treatment at the hands of authorities, but, in the end, wrongdoings are revenged and those guilty of misbehaviour receive their punishment.Footnote 42 Wallace attributes this to the Chinese understanding of justice and moral responsibility, which emphasizes the idea that a solution (or retribution) will be found sooner or later, if one simply waits long enough. This might not necessarily happen during one's lifetime, but eventually wrongs are put right, because the world is basically just. This way of thinking requires perceiving things from a long-term, cosmological perspective and seeing an individual's guilt or vindication within a wider context of collective punishment or redemption. In addition, characters in literature do not try to resist their fate or question the wisdom of nature for bringing them unjust suffering.Footnote 43
In Tan's essay, the idea of longer-term retribution can also be discerned, even if he does not believe in any sort of heavenly or cosmological compensation. For him, correcting mistakes and redressing injustices requires human action and dedication. According to Tan, the case of Beichuan shows that mistakes need to be atoned for in order to avoid even greater calamities. Even though the sad fate of Beichuan is a result of mistakes that passed from one generation to the next, it is people who must take responsibility and correct the situation. Even though he urges political leaders to shoulder the blame, in another section of the essay, Tan clarifies that human beings are not the root cause of man-made calamities—the (political) system is.
Wallace maintains that the difference between Western tragedy and Chinese drama can be found in the fact that, in Chinese dramatic tradition, religious enquiry is not linked to social and political interrogation.Footnote 44 However, I argue that Tan uses the word beiju (and also canju) in a highly political sense and gives it a new meaning, beyond that found in literary genres and analysis. For him, beiju is precisely a window through which to view wider interrogations into social justice, legitimate rule, and which structures of society need to be altered. As a drama genre, beiju is perhaps largely apolitical, but beiju in relation to the contemporary earthquake is profoundly political.
Tan Zuoren was not the only one who perceived the 5.12 earthquake as revealing of social inequalities, even though his essay is perhaps the most formidable critique of the ethnic aspect of the disaster. The analysis by Davies of the ‘Fan Paopao’ or the ‘Running Fan’ case shows that, while Chinese leadership was busy propagating the ‘success story’ and suppressing the critics of their earthquake policy, another kind of discussion was surfacing online in the form of a heated debate about the behaviour of the Sichuanese schoolteacher Fan Meizhong. Mr Fan was teaching a class when the earthquake struck; after realizing it was a massive one, he sprinted out of the classroom in fear of his life. Only after he reached a safe area did he realize that he was the first person to evacuate the classroom—with his own class arriving at the playground much later.Footnote 45
Fortunately, no one died or was injured, and Fan's actions might have remained a local scandal—perhaps not even that—had he not decided to tell his story and justify his behaviour in his blog. As Davies notes, for the public, even more scandalous than his actual behaviour, was his statement that he was a selfish person and would not sacrifice himself for anyone other than his own daughter. This was in stark contrast with state media's endless stories exulting teachers and students who had selflessly sacrificed their lives while helping others to escape collapsing buildings. According to Davies, the debate on Mr Fan was symptomatic of the changes Chinese society has gone through—and is going through. One particular change is the realization by many middle-class urbanites that there exists a very different, poor, rural China that is vulnerable to natural calamities. The Wenchuan earthquake increased awareness that not everyone is in the same boat any more.Footnote 46 For Tan Zuoren, the 5.12 earthquake revealed that some did not have a boat at all.
Da Yu and respectful rule—the alternative way to govern
True to his background as environmentalist, Tan invokes the legend of Da Yu (or Yu the Great), the mythical first emperor of the Xia dynasty (which existed roughly 2070–1600 bce), as a means of contrasting it with the contemporary political system. The original Beichuan town (Yuli) is believed to have been the birth village of Da YuFootnote 47 and had a sacred status in the past. Moreover, at least some believe that Da Yu's ethnic background was Qiang, which in Tan's opinion makes the Communist Party's neglect of this minority even more shameful. Tan praises Da Yu, whose governing principles were to respect, nourish, educate, and protect people. Tan's rhetoric depicts the first emperor as a civilized, benevolent ruler, who appreciated the cultures of different ethnic groups and regions as he unified the country. Da Yu is said to have been such an excellent emperor that even Confucius considered him to be a perfect man.
In addition, it is believed that Da Yu established successful water-control measures that prevented destructive floods and benefited the people,Footnote 48 while, according to Tan, also respecting the natural environment and maintaining an ecological balance. Tan's interpretation of the Da Yu legend is an interesting contradiction with that of Economy. She presents the legend as one example of a Chinese folk tale that emphasizes the ability of human beings to successfully control and conquer nature's vagaries. According to her, this contrasts with the ancient high culture that appreciated environmental protection and balance.Footnote 49
Harmony between human beings and nature is a theme that can be discerned in several parts of the ‘Longmen Mountain’ essay. Tan also reminds the reader of the historical-cultural importance of the Longmen Mountain area for the Sichuanese, arguing that the area belongs to them all and not only to the hydroelectric plants. In many cases, the mythical emperor Yu and his water-control policies represent an approach that accommodates both the well-being of human beings and nature. What is important to bear in mind is that Tan is not referring to the factual environmental history of China. In reality, this has a rather poor performance as regards environmental degradation, which started centuries before the establishment of the PRC, but Tan uses his own interpretation of those elements of history that support his argument.
Another historical leader that Tan reminds his readers about is Zhou Enlai. On a visit to Zhejiang in 1939, Zhou, who later became the respected and even beloved premier of the PRC, remarked that the past ruling classes of China had forgotten the lesson of Yu the Great. They had not led in a beneficial way, resisted popular demands, and became autocratic tyrants, who faced revolts everywhere and were eventually doomed. Tan argues that Zhou's words should be examined closely, especially by those who blindly believe in the power of modern engineering and disregard the forces of nature and the need for a balance between nature and society. The invocation of Zhou Enlai in this context is interesting because, as Xu explains, Premier Wen Jiabao's active presence in the disaster zone was compared by some to Zhou's visits to the worst-hit areas after the Xintai earthquake in 1966. Xu remarks that these commentators’ intention was most likely to connect Wen's image to the memory of Zhou, the compassionate premier.Footnote 50 However, Tan's motive is more likely to have been to subtly criticize: although the Hu-Wen administration was perhaps able to show compassion to the affected population, unlike Yu the Great or Zhou (who arguably invoked his example), they failed to implement preventive measures, to rule in a beneficial way, or to listen to popular demands.Footnote 51
In some sense the rhetoric in the ‘Longmen Mountain’ essay can be condensed into the concept of ‘respect’ (zunzhong), because Tan Zuoren demands respect for nature and for people, as well as for truth and common sense (or local knowledge). For Tan, respect seems to be the one decisive factor that is lacking in contemporary Chinese society and policymaking. When Tan wrote his essay, reconstruction had begun and he was concerned that economic factors and propaganda might conceal the suffering of the victim-survivors, and that the narrative of victory and gratitude would hide the shortcomings of the leaders.
Tan believes that respect for the victims and survivors demands a fair apportionment of blame, reflection, and remorse. If there is no such repentance and no fair investigation into responsibility for the disaster, those people of Beichuan, Qingchuan, Wenchuan, Gaochuan, and Sichuan who died, did so in vain. The importance given to showing remorse somewhat resembles the old expectations connected with the tianming. During a natural disaster-induced crisis, the rulers were expected to cultivate virtue and express deep grief over the fate of their suffering subordinates.Footnote 52 According to Li Yuan, self-examination and self-blame were part of an appropriate response to disasters, especially during the Ming dynasty. However, the sincerity and practical policy implications of the practice varied.Footnote 53 Despite these links to ancient thought, Tan's call for respect and allocation of blame can also be connected with contemporary ideas of transparency and responsible governance.
At the end of the essay, Tan raises the idea that eventually the disaster could yield positive changes: the transformation of ideology, the awakening of a better side to human nature, the guaranteeing of human rights, the reform of the system, and the transformation of society. Tan concludes his essay by emphasizing the value of human life and appealing to national pride: ‘[. . .] the Chinese by no means are an inferior nationality. [We should] respect life, let us start from Beichuan.’Footnote 54
Conclusions
In the case of the Wenchuan earthquake, it seems clear that the CCP and the government forcefully tried to guide memories of the disaster in a direction that was most advantageous for themselves. However, it appears to be equally clear that the rulers’ narrative told is not universally accepted in China and has been publicly challenged by those individuals who seek justice for the victims and, perhaps even more fundamentally, a systemic change to a more just society that would cater for the needs and security of the ordinary people.
Despite this challenge to the existing dominant accounts and practices, both the official and the critical narratives share at least one important aspect: an emphasis on top-down responsibility for handling disasters. Neither of the narratives denies the importance of local rescue efforts and active ‘self-help’ of the victims, but it seems fair to say that the CCP has been somewhat successful in its efforts to portray itself as the almost omnipotent ‘saviour’.
Of course, in a political system such as that in China, it is difficult to imagine things being very different. Civil society and the rule of law are still relatively weak and opportunities for people to advocate around issues such as the enforcement of proper construction standards are restricted. Many questions relevant to advanced disaster prevention require expert knowledge, which cannot be expected of ordinary citizens. On the one hand, Tan Zuoren advocates listening to the local population and taking into account their practical, tacit knowledge, accumulated over centuries of living in a seismically active area. On the other hand, he also emphasizes that the empowerment of the local population still goes hand-in-hand with a strong assumption that the rulers, especially at the central level, bear the responsibility for preventing and managing disasters—and of correcting historical injustices.
Tan Zuoren uses references to the old Confucian values of benevolent rule and to former rulers who enjoy a good reputation to highlight his criticism of the current system. It is important to note that he is essentially invoking the legend of Da Yu in the sense of ‘using old language to justify new practices’ thus relying on an idealized picture of this mythical emperor. My purpose is not to claim that his interpretation of the legend is misguided or somehow wrong, but he clearly uses the old story and the assumed virtues of the ancient ruler to push his own agenda: the need for better and more responsible governing practices.
Tan places the problems in Chinese society within a wider perspec-tive by discussing the often-neglectful policies and the cavalier attitudes of the Han Chinese towards ethnic minorities. He reminds the reader that corrupt and low-quality construction and engineering not only threatens the population but also causes damage to the natural environment, especially with regard to large-scale projects such as dams and power plants. To some extent, Tan also seems to challenge the CCP's ideology of scientific development, by demanding more respect for local knowledge and experience, and by criticizing those who ‘blindly believe’ in the science of engineering. Despite his overt criticism of the current political system, Tan allows for the possibility of the political leadership and system mending their ways. He does not demand an end to CCP rule, but explains how the system could be changed to make it better for both the people and the natural environment. The keys to achieving this goal are rectifying historical injustices, an honest examination of mistakes, and respect for ordinary people.
