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May 15, 2008
New York Times At It Again: This Time, The Sichuan Earthquake
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TODAY'S POST
This op-ed piece in the New York Times -- printed just days after the almost unfathomable suffering in Sichuan -- is more than just shocking. It is like a dagger in the spine.
Ostensibly a discussion of technological advances throughout Chinese history, which China has failed to employ for the benefit of its people, the author, Simon Winchester, turns to the real point of his essay in the penultimate paragraph:
China, in its headlong attempts to modernize, has often demonstrated a dismayingly cavalier attitude toward the well-being of its people: skyscrapers are built with little attention to safety standards and are invariably far from earthquake-resistant; huge dams — not least the monstrosity that has so ruined the Three Gorges of the Yangtze — are erected in a slapdash fashion; subways, like the system burrowing through the waterlogged alluvium beneath Shanghai, are built with incautious haste; freeway tunnels are bored through earthquake fault zones.
While all that is asserted in this paragraph may be true, it is a deliberate low blow coming at a time of extraordinary weakness. Does anyone deserve such haughty academic criticism when their sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, friends and lovers, are smote with undeserved disaster? Where is your heart, man? For what purpose, this op-ed? To influence policy?
[Listen to Melissa Block of National Public Radio report on-site from Sichuan here.]
The editorial staff of the New York Times needs a significant dressing down for its cruelty. If you agree, send an e-mail to Clark Hoyt, the public editor: public (at) nytimes.com
UPDATE (May 16, 2008)
Gordon Chang himself joins the fray. Shameful.
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