Construction practices under fire
　

PANCAKED BUILDINGS: Monday’s quake showed the many flaws in China’s building boom, including shoddy practices and codes ignored by builders

AP, DUJIANGYAN, CHINA
Friday, May 16, 2008, Page 4
　

Modern apartment buildings and schools crumbled, smoothly paved highways buckled and bridges collapsed — their flimsy construction no match for the awesome forces of nature.

As the death toll soars from Monday’s quake in Sichuan Province, the scale of the devastation is raising questions about the quality of China’s recent construction boom.

“This building is just a piece of junk,” one newly homeless resident of Dujiangyan yelled on Wednesday, her body quivering with rage.

Her family salvaged clothing and mementos from their wrecked apartment, built when their older home was razed 10 years ago.

“The government tricked us. It told us this building was well constructed. But look at the homes all around us, they’re still standing,” said the woman, who would give only her surname, Chen.

Three decades of high-paced growth have remade China. But as the widespread devastation from Monday shows, the pell-mell pace has led some builders to cut corners, especially in outlying areas largely populated by the very young and the very old.

“This new economy in China is not going up safely, it’s going up fast, and the two don’t go together,” said Roger Bilham, a professor of geological sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

“You look at the buildings that fell and they should not have fallen,” he said. “This is a story that has been repeated throughout the developing nations.”

New buildings in Beijing are built to exacting codes to withstand earthquakes.

However, “anti-earthquake standards are not as strict in places like Sichuan as in Shanghai,” said Ren Bing, an architectural designer at Hong Kong-based China Construction International Co.

Monday’s temblor flattened smaller towns in the disaster zone like Yingxiu. In Beichuan, entire blocks of apartments seemingly disintegrated. In Dujiangyan city, there was little evidence of steel reinforcement bars in the concrete rubble.

Other infrastructure old and new suffered as well. Nearly 400 dams, most of them small, were damaged across Sichuan.

Since the 1976 quake in Tangshan killed at least 240,000 people, the government has tried to improve building standards.

“China has been taking earthquake safety very seriously in the past 10 to 20 years,” said Susan Tubbesing, head of the California-based Earthquake Engineering Research Institute. “From what I understand, the codes China has adopted in the past 20 years have been good, solid, seismic codes.”

Chinese building codes are designed according to the level of shaking expected from a major temblor, said Claire Souch, senior director of model management at the consulting firm Risk Management Solutions, which is working with the Chinese to assess the damage.

In Sichuan, new buildings are built to withstand a shaking level of 7, Souch said.

But the magnitude-7.9 quake produced a shaking intensity of 10 near the epicenter, which usually results in total collapses.

“Essentially what happened is the actual ground shaking has far exceeded the design code for that region,” Souch said.

Another problem is that actual enforcement of building codes varies. The construction boom that has underpinned much of the stunning growth has also been an invitation for corruption, with officials and developers colluding.

In big cities, authorities generally enforce regulations. But that isn’t always true in smaller cities. And in rural areas, it’s out of the question, says Andrew Smeall, an associate at Asia Society’s Center on US-China Relations in New York.

A commentary in Wednesday’s state-run China Daily did question the staggering death toll, especially in schools wrecked by the quake, suggesting an investigation might find builders to blame.

Doing more for the disabled

The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) took effect on May 3, becoming the first human rights treaty of the 21st century. It was created to ensure the rights of persons with disabilities (PWD), who represent about 10 percent of the world population.

Today, with a global number of 650 million PWD — including more than 1.4 million in Taiwan — the CRPD guarantees the highest protection of rights.

It is now possible to say: “Yes, we PWD finally have our own human rights convention!”

The CRPD is unique for advancing, protecting and implementing the human rights of PWD in all aspects. More specifically, it transformed the traditional angle of PWD issues from social welfare to one of rights.

The CRPD reminds us not to see PWD from a perspective of self-abasement and sympathy, but rather as equals with the full rights and privileges to pursue happiness.

Within the treaty’s 50 articles, the CRPD includes almost every aspect of PWD’s basic rights: health, education, family, accessible environment, work and employment, social affairs, politics, cultural life, athletic participation, dignity preservation, privacy protection, freedom of communication, statistics and information accumulation, international cooperation and national implementation and monitoring. All of this aims to protect the fundamental rights of PWD.

Although PWDs represent 4 percent of the Taiwanese population, their unemployment rate is three times that of the general public. Financial support for PWD comes primarily from the government, followed by family. However, their monthly family expenses are usually NT$50,000 more than those of an average family. Moreover, the physical condition of PWD typically starts to deteriorate at about 50 — in other words, 15 to 20 years earlier than in persons without disabilities. Only half of PWD are married. These members from “disabled families” are at high risk not only in their finances, but also in their marriages. They also face an unfriendly environment, community opposition and discrimination.

After three years of lobbying, the Protection of the Rights and Interests of (Physically and Mentally) Disabled Citizens Act (身心障礙者權益保障法) was announced on July 11 last year. Its mission statement proclaimed that: “This act serves to protect the legal rights and interests of the disabled, secure their equal opportunity to participate in social, political, economic, and cultural activities fairly, while contributing to their independence and development,” which corresponds to the spirit of the CRPD. Nonetheless, the act has not yet fully been put into effect in Taiwan.

Therefore, the Republic of China (ROC) League of Welfare Organizations for the Disabled and the Eden Social Welfare Foundation are calling on society to help disabled families fully integrate society. Furthermore, we urge the government to adopt world-class standards and continue pushing for the full protection of the rights of PWD by advocating barrier-free mobility and employment opportunities for them.

First, this means ensuring PWDs’ right to make decisions on what kind of medical care, education and community life they want to have.

Second, it implies providing access, information and assistance that will allow PWD to have an independent life and participate in society.

Lastly, it means barrier-free employment opportunities and education, occupational rehabilitation, a secure work environment and access to professional training for career advancement.

We celebrate the coming into force of the UN Disability Rights Convention, which has already been signed by 128 countries. Despite the fact that Taiwan is not a UN member and therefore cannot sign the convention, we will assume our responsibilities and adhere to international norms by advocating the rights of PWD.

We sincerely hope that president-elect Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and his administration will actively advocate and implement the rights of PWDs and by doing so improve Taiwan’s international visibility.

Shieh Tung-ru
ROC League of Welfare Organizations for the Disabled

Huang Cho-song
Eden Social Welfare Foundation
Taipei

Convenient Chinese, disposable Burmese
　

The Sichuan earthquake provided relief to Western leaders whose hypocrisy on intervention is exposed by post-cyclone inaction

By Simon Jenkins
THE GUARDIAN, LONDON
Friday, May 16, 2008, Page 9

You don't have to be cynical to do foreign policy, but it helps. A sigh of relief rose over the West's chancelleries on Monday as it became clear that the Sichuan earthquake was big — big enough to trump Myanmar’s cyclone.

To add to the relief, Beijing was behaving better than it has over past calamities. Since this might have been thanks to the West’s “positive engagement” with China’s dictators — even awarding them the Olympics — we could possibly take credit from the week’s tally of disaster. Sorry about that, Burma.

The cyclone of 11 days ago has already slid into liberal interventionism’s recycle bin, a purgatory called Mere Abuse. The regime’s refusal to aid some 1.5 million people reportedly facing starvation in the Irrawaddy delta has been subjected only to a “shock and awe” of adjectival assault.

In the UK, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called the refusal “utterly unacceptable” (which means accepted). British Aid Minister Douglas Alexander professed himself “horrified.” Foreign Secretary David Miliband used the words “malign neglect ... a humanitarian catastrophe of genuinely epic proportions.” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon registered “deep concern and immense frustration.” French President Nicolas Sarkozy found the inaction “utterly reprehensible” and German Chancellor Angela Merkel found it “inexplicable.” US President George W. Bush declared the regime “either isolated or callous.” As Rudyard Kipling would have said, if Kruger could be killed with words the Myanmar regime would be dead and buried.

What is it about Myanmar? The very same politicians who spent the past seven years declaring the virtue of intervening wherever the mood took them are now, if not tongue-tied, then hands-tied. Where are the buccaneers of Bosnia, the crusaders of Kosovo, the bravehearts who rescued Sierra Leone from its rebels, the Afghans from the Taliban and the Iraqis from former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein? Where are the gallants who sent convoys into Croatia in 1992 to relieve human suffering in conditions of chaos and hostility?

Overnight they have become signed-up members of the “you can’t solve all the world’s problems” party. Those who claim the lunatic Afghan adventure “a good war” and remark that “we cannot just leave these people to their fate,” find no problem in “leaving” hundreds of thousands to die, abandoned by their rulers in Myanmar. It is said to be a long way away, a matter of national sovereignty, very difficult, a harsh environment, not covered by international law.

The same legal experts who burned midnight oil trying to justify invading Iraq are now doing overtime to justify not sending relief into Myanmar. In 2005, the West’s leaders boasted the UN’s “responsibility to protect” principle, claiming that this “R2P” justified the UN Security Council in authorizing action against negligent states. It would provide cover for intervention if, for instance, a government in Kabul or Islamabad or Khartoum was experiencing domestic massacres but denying access to aid workers.

Legal opinion now asserts that this meant only cases of genocide, ethnic cleansing and “crimes against humanity.” It did not embrace deliberate negligence following a natural disaster, but rather acts of overt violence. The R2P doctrine is, I am told, “an immensely delicate instrument” that would be better tested somewhere other than Myanmar. Myanmar’s dead, in other words, are just the wrong sort of corpses.

All the UN’s fine print was not needed for a contested humanitarian intervention in Kosovo in 1998. It was not needed to topple the Taliban or Saddam when political retribution demanded it. Anyone who wants to help the Burmese within the law need only summon former British attorney-general Lord Goldsmith from retirement. He does exonerations to order.

Regular readers know I do not favor inappropriate interventions in the affairs of foreign states. They usually breach the UN charter on national sovereignty without meeting any of the tests legalizing such breaches, including the informal one that a breach must at least work.

Myanmar validates any breach. If ever so-called humanitarian intervention were justified, it is now. Just as many civilians may have already died as were lost in the entire 2004 tsunami, when 230,000 were unaccounted for. Over a million civilians are at risk as a direct result of decisions made by a dictatorial government that places pride and security ahead of the care of its people.

On the most optimistic estimates, only 30 percent have yet received any help at all.

As veteran French aid worker Pierre Fouillant of Comite de Secours Internationaux said on Tuesday, “It’s like they are taking a gun and shooting their own people.”

Yet there are ships, planes, helicopters, supplies and doctors aplenty waiting offshore. They do not want to topple any regime. The US commander aboard the one relief plane allowed into Yangon at the weekend offered three ships and two dozen helicopters that could land supplies and leave Myanmar’s territory for Thailand each day by nightfall. Myanmar soldiers could be on the planes. He was sent packing.

I am not in Myanmar and I am not an aid worker. For that reason I am ready to be convinced that there are logistical reasons why dump-and-run operations from ships offshore are impractical, even if Yangon airport remains closed. I am less persuaded by the Pentagon’s reluctance to extend possibly hostile activities this far into Southeast Asia, or by some aid agencies that value their relations with odious regimes too much to welcome unauthorized drops.

After days of hand-sitting and abuse-hurling, the thesis that “diplomatic pressure” is going to burst the dam of Myanmar’s hostility seems naive. I have read not one observer who believes this regime will admit aid workers, while many accept that it would be unlikely to contest a dump-and-run airlift under appropriate air cover. If the West refuses even to plan such an operation, it would be more honest to admit to doing nothing and stop counterproductive abuse of the regime.

What is sickening is the attempt to squeeze a decision not to help these desperate people into the same “liberal interventionist” ideology as validates billions of dollars on invading, occupying, destabilizing, bombing and failing to pacify other peoples whose governments also did not invite intervention.

Offending national sovereignty is apparently fine when it involves oil, opium, Islam or a macho yearning to boast “regime change.” It is not to be contemplated when it is just a matter of saving hundreds of thousands of lives.