China is showing a completely different face in the openness with which it is handling the aftermath of the Sichuan earthquake. I am not referring to the efficiency, speed and organisational skill with which rescue and disaster management is being undertaken, though obviously this is priority number one at this stage; in this piece I will describe the metamorphosis in information and public relations management by the state, and new forms of civilian responses to the catastrophe. Something is happening in the style and behaviour of society and state; for China watchers, it comes as a fascinating but welcome aftershock.

The quake

The May 12 earthquake, which was measured at 8.0 on the Richter scale, was in Sichuan in southwestern China, the country’s fourth most populated Province, and was centred in Wenshuan County. The epicentre is 90km from the provincial capital Chengdu but tremors were felt as far as a thousand miles away. The death toll is estimated at about 75,000, hundreds of thousands have been injured and 5 million people have been rendered homeless. The official and civil responses have been exemplary; the Communist Party rapidly swung into action and the PLA which sent 100,000 troops into the area within three days was very soon in total control of the situation. Prime Minister Wen Jiabao was in Sichuan within hours of the quake and was directing operations; refugee camps were orderly, distribution of food and drinking water well organised, disinfection timely and disease outbreaks prevented; medical facilities are coping reasonably. This sort of top gear response one expects from China anyway, but what is new was the openness of the process, but more on this anon.

The initial quake has been followed by over a week of aftershocks, some of them very severe. One of the most serious concerns is that Sichuan is a province with 1300 rivers and 120 dams; five major tributaries of Asia’s greatest river, the Yangtze (which skirts Sichuan’s western and southern borders) lie in the province. Landslides have raised water levels in many lakes and reservoirs. Bad weather is continuing to hamper rescue work, but more seriously, heavy rainfall is compounding concerns about the dams; many have developed cracks, and now there is the fear of overtopping. If even one of the bigger ones gives up, 10 million people downstream may have to flee – some evacuation has already been ordered. PLA detonation teams have started managed breaching of some dams and controlled emptying of lakes is in progress. Questions are being asked about why so many dams were built in an area with known fault zones. (The earthquake, however, was several hundred miles upstream of Three Gorges, but environmentalists will begin finger wagging when the mandatory period of politeness for the emergency passes).

China’s unexpected new face

There has been 24 hour TV coverage on several national channels, CCTV-9, China’s 24-hour English language international channel has carried extensive coverage, aftershocks, danger of flooding, the fearful tasks of breaking through the rubble in rescue missions are all dealt with openly. Foreign journalists and camera teams have descended in large numbers. This is completely new compared to the way in which China handled all its previous natural disasters – such as the catastrophic 1976 Tangshan earthquake and the 1998 Yangtze floods, the worst in 44 years. A second radical departure from previous practices is that civilians, either as individuals or in groups, as well as NGOs have poured into the area with money, food, tents, bedding, transport facilities and medication. This is new for China where the heavy hand of state management overlay every previous mega scale national mobilisation.

What is the reason for this unexpected volte-face and does it signal a permanent mutation? Three decades of perhaps the fastest economic growth in human history is creating a large middle-class, something that China did not inherit from a colonial past – India is the obvious counter example. The burgeoning middle class, first and most important, is numerically huge, numbering in the tens of millions already, perhaps more than a hundred million depending on the criteria one employs. These people are educated, an increasing number own a flat or a car, and have acquired the self-confidence and values universal to this class. China also has ancient traditions of community self-help which decades of communism conflated with socialistic economic and ideological practices. The combination of wealth, mobility and community responsiveness unleashed a flood of civilian intervention after the earthquake. The government, stretched to the limit, even if fearful of public mobilisation, was prevented by the imperatives of the situation from attempting to subordinate independent initiatives to its own dictates.

Can the genie be put back in the bottle?

Processes of economic development have created concomitant social changes that have been maturing for a long time; these elements burst out and manifested themselves as civilian involvements to meet urgent unexpected needs. That is to say, the earthquake acted as a trigger for the release of latent potential. The state in China is still very much a semi-Stalinist affair; it is authoritarian and fearful of rival centres of power and though it is changing to allow space for a more open economy and to accommodate more assertive social classes, its monopoly of power remains largely intact. Fulan gong for example is a fairly harmless sect that likes to do its Tai chi exercises and practice cult like observances. It is non-political and seems to be no challenge to the state. However, it is very large and well organised and this is a threat to the control freak mentality of the one party state; the CCP is in no mood to dilute its monopoly of power. The arguments with the Vatican about who appoints Bishops and the reluctance to deal with the Dalai Lama and his "government" in exile, spring from similar apprehensions.

So will this brief spring of openness be abandoned once the dust settles on the earthquake debris and will the genie of tolerance be bottled up again? For several reasons I think it will not be easy. The clout of the new social forces is not going to ebb away. These people have been asserting themselves for a while – the earthquake aftermath was just an exceptional manifestation - and their influence will continue to grow; the CCP will have to adapt. The Olympics is also putting pressure on Beijing to maintain a more open society in allowing the flow of information, and the bad press about Tibet, which has been astutely contained by playing on the earthquake, could turn awkward again.

The most ugly aspect, however, is only just raising its head. Right now the priority still is responding to the emergency, but a huge backlash regarding the collapse of school buildings is developing. Hundreds of schools collapsed and tens of thousands of students were crushed to death while other neighbouring structures stood or suffered limited damage. Corrupt provincial government and party functionaries made big money winking at shoddy construction, hand in glove with rogue contractors. Parents are now on the warpath, officials and regional party bosses are being rebuked, anger is pouring out. The leaders in Beijing cannot avoid the fallout, by trying to pass the blame to lower orders; top leaders will be impaled.