Regime-Quakes in Burma and China by Naomi Klein

[Joanne98]

May 15, 2008

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When news arrived of the catastrophic earthquake in Sichuan, my mind turned to Zheng Sun Man, an up-and-coming security executive I met on a recent trip to China. Zheng heads Aebell Electrical Technology, a Guangzhou-based company that makes surveillance cameras and public address systems and sells them to the government.


More Info
Naomi Klein's in-depth feature on China's high-tech surveillance state appears in this month's Rolling Stone magazine.

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Zheng, a 28-year-old MBA with a text-messaging addiction, was determined to persuade me that his cameras and speakers are not being used against pro-democracy activists or factory organizers. They are for managing natural disasters, Zheng explained, pointing to the freak snowstorms before Lunar New Year. During the crisis, the government "was able to use the feed from the railway cameras to communicate how to deal with the situation and organize an evacuation. We saw how the central government can command from the north emergencies in the south."

Of course, surveillance cameras have other uses too--like helping to make "Most Wanted" posters of Tibetan activists. But Zheng did have a point: nothing terrifies a repressive regime quite like a natural disaster. Authoritarian states rule by fear and by projecting an aura of total control. When they suddenly seem short-staffed, absent or disorganized, their subjects can become dangerously emboldened. It's something to keep in mind as two of the most repressive regimes on the planet--China and Burma--struggle to respond to devastating disasters: the Sichuan earthquake and Cyclone Nargis. In both cases, the disasters have exposed grave political weaknesses within the regimes--and both crises have the potential to ignite levels of public rage that would be difficult to control.

When China is busily building itself up, residents tend to stay quiet about what they all know: developers regularly flout safety codes, while local officials are bribed not to notice. But when China comes tumbling down--including at least eight schools--the truth has a way of escaping. "Look at all the buildings around. They were the same height, but why did the school fall down?" demanded a distraught relative in Juyuan. A mother in Dujiangyan told the Guardian, "Chinese officials are too corrupt and bad.... They have money for prostitutes and second wives but they don't have money for our children."

That the Olympic stadiums were built to withstand powerful quakes is suddenly of little comfort. When I was in China, it was hard to find anyone willing to criticize the Olympic spending spree. Now posts on mainstream web portals are calling the torch relay "wasteful" and its continuation in the midst of so much suffering "inhuman." Continued>
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080602/klein/print