Six months after China's Great Earthquake, the political aftershocks are becoming clearer. In a year in which the Beijing Olympics were expected to be the main political event in China, the Sichuan earthquake has proven to be of much greater importance. The Olympics ended up being mainly about sports. The Sichuan earthquake, by contrast, was a literally seismic event in the redefinition of the relationship between the Chinese state and its rapidly changing society
The 7.9-magnitude quake in Sichuan province on May 12 left 88,000 people dead or missing. Moreover, several aspects of those deaths raised serious questions about local corruption and the limits of the country's growth. Many of those who died were schoolchildren in poor areas who were trapped inside poorly constructed buildings.
Yet Beijing has maintained its Teflon-like ability to remain untouched by the sharp edge of popular anger. In fact, the ruling Chinese Communist Party's skillful handling of the disaster gave it an unexpected boost in public support. By opening up the disaster zone to foreign aid almost immediately and ordering the largest military mobilization in the country since Tiananmen, the CCP successfully framed itself as the great savior of the nation during the rescue operations. It plans to reinforce this image with an 11-volume pictorial published by the official Xinhua news agency. A survey of 784 people in the quake zone conducted in August by Beijing-based Horizon Research Consultancy Group found that 98.8% were satisfied with the central government's performance. Premier Wen Jiabao told a meeting on post-quake reconstruction in Sichuan in September the government had achieved a "major victory."
Yet the price of that victory was to unleash forces of liberalization that will prove irreversible in coming years. For starters, the earthquake undermined support for local government in the affected areas, and intensified the campaign against corruption. Beijing has played along by firing several local leaders and encouraging an unusually prurient press. As of Sept. 15, 172 officials in Sichuan had been punished for misappropriation of disaster relief funds and goods -- something almost unheard of in China, where disaster operations have usually been used to highlight the gallantry of cadres at every level. An official panel in September said local officials had been corrupt or imprudent in their rush to build new schools.
Director Pan Jianlin's feature-length documentary, "Who Killed Our Children?," directs its searing gaze at local officials in explaining the collapse of the Muyu Middle School's dormitory, in which 297 students were killed. The film debuted in South Korea in October and is awaiting approval in China. By encouraging citizens to blame local governments for their problems in this case as in others, Beijing is contributing to the collapse of local governance in China, which will eventually wear away its own Teflon coating.
The second major cost of the "major victory" concerns civil society. Prior to the quake, there was a deep divide within elite public opinion on the role of civil society, which conservatives accurately view as a dangerous double-edged sword that will slice authority away from the party-state. At present, all NGOs are closely controlled by the state through onerous registration and management regulations. Those that operate outside of official approval are frequently shut down or taken over.
The important role of groups such as China's Red Cross or the 150 NGOs that set up an independent "Sichuan Region Joint Relief Office" after the quake, however, have tipped the balance of elite opinion. Writing in the Party journal Theoretical Horizon, for instance, two public administration professors from Sichuan University, Luo Zhongshu and Wang Zhuo, call the quake a "historic moment" in the evolution of official attitudes toward civil society. "For the first time we had a situation where the government really just let go of things and the result was not chaos but rather a uniting of social forces," they write. "We are always stressing the importance of stability, but now we can see that orderly and well-meaning cooperation within society itself is the best basis of stability." The Chinese magazine World Knowledge declared 2008 "the year of the NGO in China" as a result of the quake.
How quickly this leads to a loosening of official restrictions on NGO registration and activities remains to be seen. Messrs. Luo and Wang along with other scholars and cadres are proposing a broad new political role for NGOs in the making and administration of public policy. Beijing is resisting, but the results of the quake may be that -- like most key reforms in China -- society will take the initiative even without official approval.
In a recent article in the Consumer Times two cadres from the China Meteorological Administration, Wang Limei and Yin Bo, note that "natural disasters often threaten ruling parties with collapse or replacement if they are not handled properly." The CCP's rapid and efficient response to the Sichuan quake, they note, saved it from that fate.
Perhaps. The quake on its own did not undermine Party rule. But even as Beijing manages its Wizard of Oz deceptions to maintain public esteem, on the ground events are rapidly energizing Chinese society to expect and demand much more from their rulers. It's hard to predict what the aftershocks from that might be.
Mr. Gilley is an assistant professor of political science at Portland State University and the author of "China's Democratic Future" (Columbia University Press, 2004).
