The Capitalist Ground Shaken by The Earthquake In China

Isang dahilan daw kung bakit sobrang laki ng pinsala't buhay na naibuwis sa lindol marahil, gawa sa ''TOFU'' (inferior quality) ang mga building materials na itinayo ng gubyernong lokal sa Sichuan province. Kung mangyayari siguro ang ganitong magnitude na lindol sa Pinas, baka hindi natin makayanan, mas malala pa ang pinsala. - doy

By Li Onesto
27 May, 2008
Revcom.us
Monday, May 12, 2:28 pm. A huge earthquake, registering 8.0 on the Richter scale, struck Sichuan Province in southwest China. The violent shaking lasted more than a minute, leaving towns and small cities flattened. On Sunday, May 25, a powerful aftershock struck, causing thousands more buildings to collapse. (Photo: http://english.aljazeera.net/PhotoGallery/Aspx/Show.aspx?album=chinaquake&currentPage=3&slidshow=Next)

The death toll now stands at over 62,000 people. 160,000 have been injured. Five million left homeless. More than 200,000 homes completely collapsed and four million were damaged.

The quake hit in the middle of the day when schools were in session—children were napping, sitting at their desks, and playing in schoolyards. Some reports say 30-40 percent of the dead were schoolchildren. In the town of Mianzhu alone, seven schools, including two nursery schools, collapsed—burying more than 1,700 students.
(Photo: Entire towns and cities at the heart of the disaster zone have been reduced to rubble [AFP] http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/9A4B7BB8-EDE6-451E-85EA-CC3F8D89D91F.htm

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What happens when such a natural disaster occurs is profoundly affected by how a society is organized. And many things about the nature of China have been revealed by this catastrophe. Most people around the world watching this heartbreaking tragedy think China is a socialist country, run by a communist government. But in fact, since the reactionary coup led by Deng Xiaoping after Mao Tsetung’s death in 1976, China has been a capitalist country, dependent on and subordinate to global imperialism. And some stark things about the exploitative and oppressive nature of capitalist China have been revealed in the aftermath of this devastating earthquake.
http://www.countercurrents.org/onesto270508.htm