Lets all be realistic. “ALL” governments fail their people in times of great crisis, simply because “ALL” people want immediate solutions, immediately or sooner & they want to be able to say, “this should ‘never’ have happened.”
One cannot compare the response of one govt to that of another. What one can do is look at the responses of ‘a’ govt & determine where it failed to respond in a timely manner or w/ adequate resources. On those points, just as the American govt failed the people of New Orleans, so too has China fail the people of the Sichuan province, etc.
Perhaps the big difference is, the Sichuan province govt asked for help. The New Orleans govt asked & then the state govt actually rejected or stalled approving actions of some help initially offered. Local govt actually failed to utilize its own resources to relocate people, yet still used that situation to politically attack the president. The people of New Orleans had choices, but they “gambled” (as usual), that they would get away with no harm. The people of the Sichuan province had no such option.
All of the naysayers are pathetic. Crisis happens whether we want it to or not. And in crisis, people sometimes fail to response as those looking on from a removed perspective, or afterward, “think” the govt &/or others should have responded. Monday morning quarter-backing has become enshrined as a right of the people, even when its logic is misplaced & based on wishful thinking rather than reality.
The Chinese govt problem is, they cannot subdue what the people think anymore. In America the federal govt was vilified by the media with glee. That led to a national mood. In China, it is the people who developed the mood, all on their own. Their mood is based on what they see as central govt failures to adequately respond & with views of a govt more worried about looking good for their Olympic plans, rather than the disaster.
