Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Beijing Floods

Another who read the news in the past few days knows about the floods that hit Beijing. The heaviest rainfall in 60 years caused floods that killed 37 people and sparked fierce criticism of the Chinese government.

In a mark of how out of touch the Chinese government is, the propaganda chief of Beijing, Lu Wei, has ordered Chinese media to “stick to good news about weekend floods”. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry when I read this.

What good news is this guy talking about? Is this about the 37 people who had died? Is about the lack of warning to the citizens? Is it about the fact that waters rose to 2m in less than half an hour due to the city’s poor drainage systems? Is it about how all these happened in the capital of China?

This is a disaster. This is a crisis and authorities want to “focus” on good news? Man, how out of reality can you get?

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