Earthquake!

In 1976, a 8.2 magnitude earthquake hit Tangshan, in the Chinese province of Hebei. Officially, an acknowledgment of the event did not even take place until months later, and as a result, wild rumours ran rampant. Aftershocks felt in nearby Beijing were reported by locals as new earthquakes, creating more panic and uncertainty over the situation. It's estimated that 242,000 people died in total.

Yesterday, a slightly weaker earthquake (7.9 magnitude) hit Wenchuan, a (luckily) small city some 100km outside Sichuan province's capital of Chengdu. The quake was so strong that it shook skyscrapers here in Shanghai (about 1,700km away), forcing emergency evacuations. Thousands of students are said to have died in the collapse of school buildings around the epicentre, with the official total death toll (24 hours later) already standing at 10,000. Many more are still missing. Given the government's history of dealing with such issues, it's not unreasonable to assume that this early estimate is a little conservative, but let's hope that the final count will not be nearly as high as it was last time.

Of course, fudging the numbers is different than hiding something altogether, but 32 years and the advent of the internet later, it's not as if the government has any choice. I've read that the news of the earthquake first broke on twitter.com, a networking site on which users can post updates on what's going on around them. Since then, it's been covered extensively on different blogs and websites (Shanghaiist has been posting new stuff every five minutes), and those with video footage have posted what they've got on Youtube.

What I don't get is why the government is so eager to cover up events like these. It's not like anyone can blame them for an earthquake.