China's Katrina

Newsweek, December, 2005 by Melinda Liu

Bungling, delay, cover-up. When such missteps follow a major disaster, officials often have to resign. We saw it unfold in the United States after the killer hurricane Katrina. Now we're seeing heads roll in China, following the Nov. 13 chemical plant explosion that killed five people and spilled 100 tons of benzene-like carcinogens into the Songhua River.

There are sackings, and then there are sackings. In China, who's getting the axe and how--bureaucratically speaking, that is--holds greater symbolic and political significance than in many other countries. Here, all eyes are focused on the fallout of the massive chemical spill that forced Harbin city's four million residents to go without running water for five days--and that now is slated to float by the Russian city of...

Read the full article with a Free Trial at MyWire.

Premium Content Partnership | MyWire provides an in-depth online archive library of reference works.