This is a thread devoted to the May 12 earthquake in China.

From BBC News, here's one of the initial reports on the devastating earthquake:

A powerful earthquake is reported to have killed at least 7,000 people in China's south-western Sichuan province, up to 5,000 of them in just one county.

Many more are feared killed and injured in other parts of the country after the quake, which had a magnitude of 7.8, struck at 1428 local time (0628 GMT).

At least 50 bodies have been recovered from the rubble of a school where an estimated 900 students were buried.

President Hu Jintao has urged "all-out" efforts to rescue victims.

The epicentre of the earthquake was about 92km (57 miles) from Chengdu, Sichuan's provincial capital.

Because the earthquake struck in the middle of the day, it is feared that many schoolchildren may be among the victims.

Cries for help

One of the worst-hit areas appears to be Beichuan county, part of the Mianyang city municipal area, about 50km from the epicentre.




Some 80% of buildings there were reported to have been destroyed, leaving between 3,000 and 5,000 people dead and up to 10,000 injured.

Meanwhile hundreds of people were reported to have been buried in two collapsed chemical plants in Shifang in Sichuan, and at least five other schools were reported to have collapsed.

And there are fears the death toll could turn out to be much higher once the damage in Wenchuan county - the epicentre - is assessed, says BBC China analyst Shirong Chen.

The area is very rugged, full of mountains and valleys and a number of roads are connected with bridges from one mountain top to the next, he says.
There were harrowing reports from the scene of a school collapse in Dujiangyan city - about 100km (60 miles) from the epicentre - where 900 students were buried and 50 dead.

Teenagers buried beneath the rubble of the three-storey Juyuan Middle School building were struggling to break free, while others were crying out for help, state news agency Xinhua reported.

Parents were watching as cranes excavated the site. Villagers rushed to help with the rescue.

Two girls said they escaped because they had "run faster than others".

Fast response

Dozens of aftershocks have been reported since the quake, which was felt in Beijing, 1,545km (960 miles) away, and the Thai capital Bangkok, 1,800km (1,200 miles) away.

It was the strongest to hit Sichuan province in more than 30 years, Xinhua said.

The province is the most populated part of China - home to 87 million people.

State television said the quake had not caused major damage to Chengdu, which has a population of more than 10 million people, or to the nearby Three Gorges Dam.

Troops and helicopters have been sent to help with relief work.

The BBC's Quentin Somerville says this is probably the the most significant natural disaster to hit China in recent memory, but that the Chinese army has a good record of mobilising and getting people to safety.

He also says it is one of the most open and speedy responses to an emergency he has ever seen from Chinese state media.

The quake was felt as far away as Beijing, he says, meaning millions of people will feel connected to the disaster and will be watching TV screens closely to see how the government responds.

From Bloomberg News, here are more details:

China was hit by a magnitude-7.8 earthquake, the nation's strongest in 58 years causing buildings to shake in Beijing, more than 1,500 kilometers (930 miles) away. Between 3,000 and 5,000 were killed in one county alone, China state media said.

The quake struck 90 kilometers west-northwest of the central city of Chengdu at 2:28 p.m. local time, at a depth of 10 kilometers, the U.S. Geological Survey said. A magnitude-6 quake struck the area about 15 minutes later. Chengdu, with 11 million people, is Sichuan's provincial capital, site of China's largest panda reserve and where 40 percent of gas deposits are found.

A Sichuan high school building collapsed and may have buried as many as 900 students in a mudslide, Xinhua News Agency said earlier. The agency cited China's Ministry of Civil Affairs as saying at least 107 were confirmed dead. In a separate incident, four students were killed and at least 100 were injured when two schools collapsed in Liangping county of Chongqing municipality, adjacent to Sichuan, state-run Xinhua said. Chongqing is about 350 kilometers from the epicenter and has a population of about 30 million. One person died in Sichuan province.

``It's a big one,'' said Dimtry Storchak, director of the Berkshire, U.K.-based International Seismological Centre. ``It could be a very disastrous earthquake. It depends on how deep, or how shallow it struck, and what the local structures are like,'' Storchak said today in a telephone interview.

The death toll may rise, Deng Changwen, a spokesman for the Sichuan provincial seismological bureau, was quoted as saying by Xinhua. Troops and a 180-men rescue team have been sent to Wenchuan, a city of 111,800 people and one of the closest population centers to the quake, Xinhua said.

Older Buildings

``The rescue efforts will be focused on the older parts of the city, where there are older buildings that aren't well reinforced,'' Deng said.

The quake damaged more than 2,000 China Mobile Ltd. base stations, Vice President Sha Yuejia said in an interview broadcast on state-run China Central Television.

The quake shook buildings in Beijing for more than three minutes and traffic stopped. Construction cranes stopped work, while hundreds of workers were seen scrambling to get out of buildings including the China World Tower, one of the tallest structures in the Chinese capital.

There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage in the capital. Shaking was felt as far as Hong Kong and Bangkok in Thailand, 1,950 kilometers away.

Quake Sparks Panic

The quake sparked panic in cities and towns across Sichuan and other central provinces, Xinhua said. No damage was reported at the Three Gorges Dam, the world's largest hydroelectric dam, Xinhua said.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao arrived in Chengdu about five hours after the earthquake struck, while President Hu Jintao issued an order for an immediate response from government agencies, according to Xinhua.

Wen called the earthquake a ``disaster'' and called for calm and ordered immediate relief work, according to state media.

Today's earthquake was the world's strongest tremor since a 7.9-magnitude temblor struck Indonesia in September, according to the USGS. Today's temblor was the biggest to hit China since a magnitude-8.6 quake struck Tibet in 1950, killing 1,526 people. China's deadliest disaster was a 7.5-magnitude quake that killed 250,000 people in northeastern China's Tangshan in 1976.

The U.S. Geological Survey defines an earthquake of magnitude 7 or more as ``major,'' and one above 8 as ``great.''

`Serious Quake'

``Let me take the opportunity to express regret at the news of the very serious earthquake that I understand occurred only a few hours ago in Sichuan province, and I wanted to convey our concern over that situation,'' U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte said in a meeting with Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping in Beijing.

Hundreds of employees were evacuated from skyscrapers in the Lujiazui district of Shanghai, the city's financial center, where the stock exchange and banks including Citigroup Inc. and HSBC Holdings Plc have offices. No damage was reported.

Sichuan has about 40 percent of China's natural gas reserves and produced about 22 percent of the nation's output in 2006, according to China National Petroleum Corp. and BP Plc's annual energy report. The province is also home to China's largest reserve for the endangered giant panda.

PetroChina Co., a unit of China National Petroleum, hasn't yet received any reports of damage at its fields in the earthquake zone, spokesman Mao Zefeng said.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. closed outlets in Chengdu after the shaking knocked goods off shelves, Dong Yuguo, a spokesman, said by telephone. Power and water supplies inside the stores were also down, he said.

Ford Motor Co. Honda Motor Co. and Nissan Motor Co. said there was no immediate damage to their factories in Sichuan, Chongqing and other areas.

The Ministry of Railways said it hadn't received any reports of interruptions to services, Yang Xue, an official, said.

The quake was powerful enought to shake buildings in Beijing, which was 930 miles away from the epicenter, for THREE minutes.
So you can only imagine how intense it must have been in Chengdu, which is about 50 miles away. Nevertheless, for what it's worth, Chinese state TV is reporting that the city, which is an important financial center in China, escaped signicant damage. This is from XFN-ASIA:

A reporter for CCTV news in Chengdu. over 1,500 km from Beijing, said residents of the city had poured out onto the streets following the quake, measured at between 7.5 and 7.8 by various agencies, but that public transport and electricity supplies remained operational.

Asked if anyone had been hurt in Chengdu, the reporter said: 'All appears to be fine.'

However, the quake appeared to have disrupted cellular telecommunications in the city, he added.

The Chengdu metropolitan area has a population of 11.3 million.

This is from the official news agency Xinhua:

DUJIANGYAN, Sichuan, May 12 (Xinhua) -- Nearly 900 students in southwest China's Sichuan Province were feared buried when a high school building collapsed here in an earthquake measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale on Monday afternoon.

At least four third-graders -- two boys and two girls -- were confirmed dead at Juyuan Middle School in Juyuan Township of Dujiangyan City, about 100 kilometers from the epicenter in Wenchuan County, parents and witnesses said.

Xinhua reporters saw a three-story school building had partially collapsed. Some buried teenagers were struggling to break loose from underneath the ruins while others were crying out for help.

Grieved parents watched as five cranes were excavating at the site and an ambulance was waiting.

A tearful mother said his son, third-grader Zhang Chengwei, was buried in the ruins.

Two girls said they escaped because they had "run faster than others."

"It was around 2:30 pm, and the building suddenly began to rock back and forth," one of them recalled.

A villager said the school had 18 classes, all second and third graders, with about 50 students in each class.

"We ran out of the house when the quake hit," said Gao Shangyuan, a villager who lived close to school and helped with the rescue work.

Gao and other villagers helped dozens of students out of the ruins. "Some had jumped out of the window and a few others ran down the stairs that did not collapse."

The quake, felt in most parts of China, has killed 107 nationwide, according to the Ministry of Civil Affairs by 18:00.

According to Xinhua, the death toll from the Sichuan earthquake now exceeds 12,000.

Li Chengyun, vice governor of Sichuan, said at a news conference Tuesday afternoon that the death toll was based on incomplete figures tallied by 4:00 p.m. Tuesday. He said another 26,206 people were injured, and more than 9,400 people were buried in debris.

In the mountainous region where the earthquake occured, a lot of the already difficult roads have been destroyed, making it exceedingly difficult to reach quake victims. Nevertheless, the Chinese army seems to be doing an amazing job. Yesterday afternoon, 20 soldiers managed to reach Wenchuan, a town near the epicenter.

The soldiers reported they saw more than 70 percent of the roads in the town were wracked, and nearly all bridges collapsed. A large number of people were believed to be under the debris.

They said 3,000 people were known to have survived, and the town's total population is 12,000. No information on detailed casualties could be available.

Li Shiming, commander of the Chengdu Military Area Command, said the soldiers had distributed food and water to children and injured people in the town, and more supplies would be airdropped to the area.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer raises an interesting point:

One measure of how China has changed can be seen through the government's handling of natural disasters. The magnitude 7.8 earthquake that devastated Sichuan and surrounding provinces was followed by an almost immediate all-hands-on-deck call by the Chinese government and an acknowledgement of a serious emergency.

It remains to be seen whether the country accepts foreign aid, already offered by President Bush and European leaders, but the fact that the country is openly addressing the disaster and has not (yet) outright refused all help is itself a sign of progress.

According to the country's official news agency Xinhua, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has traveled to Sichuan to oversee the rescue efforts.

Also interesting is the fact that the Chinese media have been covering the quake and reporting damage and fatality estimates -- which are understandably fluctuating.

Consider that when the Great Tangshan earthquake hit in 1976 (by official estimates resulting in about 242,000 deaths), it resulted in more political fallout than anything else. According to a 1979 Time magazine article, only three years after that quake did Chinese officials begin sharing details about the disaster. The country refused all international help, focusing instead on re-enforcing communist ideology. The name of a left-wing campaign, "Resist the Earthquake, Rescue Ourselves," more or less said it all, while Deng Xiaoping was accused of hampering relief efforts for political gain.

We see signs that things are different this time around and we hope that China's doors will be open to any and all needed aid.

A Xinhua article, posted at 2 p.m. Beijing time (about nine hours ago) puts the confirmed death toll at 14,866.

Here's another update on the dauntingly difficult task faced by the rescuers who are struggling to find and extricate people trapped in the ruins:

BEICHUAN, Sichuan, May 14 (Xinhua) -- Cranes and bulldozers are removing rocks and floor slabs; rescuers in orange outfits are nosing about the rubble for the slightest signs of life; groans are heard occasionally from under the ruins.

The groans are regarded as good tidings two days after a six-storey school building collapsed in Monday's earthquake and buried at least 1,000 students at Beichuan Middle School in Beichuan County of southwest China's Sichuan Province.

Dozens were saved on Wednesday as rescue work was beefed up by rescuers from Sichuan, Chongqing, Shaanxi and Shenyang. Most of the newly found survivors were injured and needed further treatment in hospital.

The quake, whose epicenter was about 90 miles away from Beichuan County, killed a quarter of the county's population of 20,000. Both the rescuers and the survivors were further punished by heavy rains on Wednesday.

The quake toppled 80 percent of the houses in the county seat and many survivors have to shelter in tents.

Heavy rain on Tuesday has brought down temperatures and left the citizens in dire needs of quilts, mattresses and sheets.

Luo Ning, aged 12, said she slept in a tent with her grandfather and several villagers. "The ground was damp and all our clothes were soaked. We could only doze off sitting on the ground, back to back, to keep each other warm."

The last sentence in the Xinhua story made me think of how we Americans felt the day after September 11:

In the worst earthquake to hit China in three decades, the Chinese have demonstrated love, courage and perseverance - qualities which it is hoped will help them pull through this disaster.

From The Times UK, here's an encouraging story:

Cheering Chinese soldiers pulled a survivor from the wreckage of a fertiliser plant today, 100 hours after the massive Sichuan earthquake.

Lin Deyun is a 50-year-old driver who should not even have been in the Yinfeng Fertiliser Plant when the earthquake struck on Monday afternoon: he had been due just to make a quick delivery. But when the building crumpled under the force of an earthquake that has now killed at least 20,000, he was in the games room.

His incredible rescue, the conclusion of which was witnessed by The Times, began when a team picking through the ruins yesterday heard sounds of life. To their amazement, they were able to speak to the trapped driver.

Lacking the equipment to dig down through the rubble, they called in a specialist team from the People's Liberation Army. They also telephoned his daughter and wife, and asked them to come to the site to keep up his spirits.

His daughter, Lin Yuan, told The Times: "I talked to my father yesterday. I called out: 'Daddy' and he said: 'I want water'. I was crying. He said he could not move at all."

It eventually took the rescue team 22 hours to free him. His body was pinned down by such heavy concrete that doctors had to amputate a part of one of his arms and one of his legs.

A military medic, Zhao Hongxiu, said: "We discussed with him that we would have to operate. He agreed that the most important thing was to save his life."

He added: "He does not seem to have internal injuries and he is very strong-willed, so we expect him to live."

His body entirely wrapped in quilts, Mr Lin was laid on a stretcher and he was rushed out of the crumpled building and into a waiting ambulance, which sped off to hospital.

Workers at the plant, situated in the town of Yunhua, said that they feared that more than 200 people are buried in the rubble. Soldiers were seen spraying disinfectant over the debris to cover the stench of rotting bodies.

The factory lies in the valley about 100 miles north of the Sichuan provincial capital Chengdu. Scarcely a single building in Yunhua is still standing.

One worker said: "It is very bad here, but higher up the valley it is even worse. There is a school, and we do not think anyone has survived."

No sooner had the ambulance left, then rescue teams turned their attention to the other side of the building, where they believed three men could still be alive in another part of the games room. They had been playing Mahjong (solitaire) when the earthquake struck.

A chemical digger was being used to scoop a path towards the men who were trapped behind a huge concrete slab.

Xinhua is reporting that the estimated death toll has climbed to 34,073.

Another 245,108 people were injured in the 8.0-magnitude quake that jolted southwestern Sichuan Province last Monday.

According to the Ministry of Health, about 52,934 people have been hospitalized and 7,979 have recovered, while 3,304 died in hospital.

China began a three-day mourning period for the victims on Monday, with flags flying at half-staff and public amusements suspended.


For perspective, the greatest natural disaster in U.S. history, the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, killed somewhere between 6,000 and 12,000 people, and 2005's Hurricane Katrina took 1,800 lives.

Here's the latest from Xinhua:

The death toll from the devastating earthquake in southwest China's Sichuan Province rose to 40,075 nationwide as of 6 p.m. Tuesday, according to the Information Office of the State Council.

Another 247,645 people were injured in the 8.0-magnitude quake that jolted southwestern Sichuan Province last Monday.

At a press conference earlier Tuesday, the information office also said that 32,361 people were missing as of Tuesday noon.

In Sichuan Province alone, 39,577 people have been confirmed dead and another 236,359 people injured as of 4 p.m. Tuesday.

As of midday Tuesday, 159 aftershocks measuring above 4 on the Richter scale had been detected in Sichuan, according to the China Seismological Bureau. Aftershocks measured above magnitude 5 numbered 26, with four stronger than magnitude 6.

About 5.36 million buildings have collapsed and more than 21 million were damaged in the earthquake, according to figures available as of Monday evening, said the Ministry of Civil Affairs.

The quake affected 434 counties in 10 provinces and municipalities in China, the ministry said in a statement issued Tuesday.

The worst-affected areas include central and northern Sichuan'sAba Prefecture, Mianyang, Deyang, Guangyuan, Ya'an and Chengdu, southeastern Gansu's Longnan, and Hanzhong and Baoji in southern and western Shaanxi Province.

Among the 34 worst-hit counties, 21 are in Sichuan, eight in Shaanxi and five in Gansu.

By Monday at midnight, up to 360,159 people trapped during the quake had been rescued and transported to safe areas, among whom 6,375 were excavated from rubble, according to the military source.

Military rescuers had reached all 1,044 worst-hit villages under 134 townships in southwestern Sichuan Province as of Tuesday evening.

A total of 278,462 tents, 783,984 quilts, 1.78 million pieces of cotton-padded clothes and 218 million yuan worth of food and drinking water had been allocated to the quake zones as of 1 p.m. Tuesday by the Ministry of Civil Affairs.

The Civil Affairs ministry and the Finance Ministry are also planning to provide each homeless quake victim who lacks an income with a daily subsidy of 10 yuan and 500 grams of food for three months, starting from late May. Orphans, widowed elders with no children and handicapped persons who lost relatives will receive another monthly subsidy of 600 yuan for three months. A 5,000-yuancompensation fund for relatives of the quake dead in the quake is also guaranteed.

As of Tuesday noon, domestic and international donations to the quake areas have reached close to 14 billion yuan, compared with 11.7 million yuan from central and local government budgets by 2 p.m. Tuesday.

So far, the provincial power grids in quake-hit Sichuan, Gansu and Shaanxi as well as Chongqing Municipality have been in normal operation while the electricity supply to Gansu, Chongqing and Shaanxi has resumed normal levels.

But, power supply was still cut off in the worst-hit Beichuan, Maoxian and Wolong counties, the information office said.

Repairs on the Baoji-Chengdu Railway are also under way.

Telecommunications lines between the outside world and the eight worst-hit counties in Sichuan (Wenchuan, Lixian, Maoxian, Qingchuan, Pingwu, Heishui, Beichuan and Mianzhu) were functional as of Tuesday noon. Of the 201 townships under the eight counties,146 had telecommunication access.

Plans for reconstruction will be worked out after authorities finish moving survivors to safe areas.

As of 2 p.m. Monday, 80 percent of the dead in Sichuan had been buried or cremated, while all bodies in other provinces reporting quake deaths have been properly handled to prevent possible plague in the quake zones.

Authorities will collect pictures and body tissue samples of those who cannot be identified before burial or cremation, to build a DNA database for future identification.

In the meantime, the State Council is calling for more tents to provide shelter for quake victims.

"Tents, what we need the most are more tents," said Jiang Li, the vice minister of civil affairs, at the press conference on Tuesday afternoon, appealing for international help.

Sufficient supplies of food, and drinking water was emphasized by the State Council, which also called for providing psychological assistance to quake victims and their relatives.

Xinhua puts the latest death toll for the earthquake at 41,353, plus 274,683 injured. There are still another 32,666 people missing, so I think we can expect deaths to reach 70,000.

Bloomberg News reports that the PRC government is evacuating tens of thousands of people from Sichuan province, amid aftershocks, landslides and flooding:

A lake created by landslides at Tangjiashan threatens 33 townships, state-run Xinhua News Agency reported, citing quake relief headquarters in nearby Mianyang City. As many as 100,000 people have already been relocated. It may take between three and five days for soldiers to dig a sluice at the lake, Xinhua said.

``Chinese people are united together to fight hard against this disaster,'' Vice President Xi Jinping said today in a speech in Tianjin.

Landslides after the May 12 quake blocked rivers in Sichuan, causing 35 lakes to form that are threatening to burst their banks. Aftershocks yesterday injured more than 60 people and brought down 420,000 houses in Qingchuan County in Sichuan and Ninggiang in Shaanxi province, Xinhua said.

Four aftershocks of 4.5 magnitude or higher have hit the area since about 4 p.m. yesterday, the U.S. Geological Survey said on its Web site. The strongest, a magnitude-5.7 quake, hit at 4:37 p.m. yesterday. The most recent was a 5-magnitude temblor at 1:35 a.m. today. A 6-magnitude quake in the area on May 25 killed eight people.

The death toll from the May 12 quake reached 68,109 people with 19,851 missing, the State Council Information Office's spokesman, Lu Guangjin, said today.

Clearing Debris

The 7.9-magnitude temblor two weeks ago injured 364,552 people. The quake affected more than 45.6 million people and about 15 million have been evacuated, Xinhua said. More than 5.2 million people were made homeless, the government said earlier.

About 600 military engineers and soldiers, using 29 excavators and bulldozers, are working to clear debris at the Tangjiashan lake, the biggest formed in Sichuan. The area is inaccessible by road and can be reached only on foot or by air.

The lake contains 130 million cubic meters (34 billion gallons) of water and was created when a part of a mountain collapsed into the Jianhe River. As many as 1.3 million people may be relocated if the lake is fully opened, Xinhua said.

Areas around the disaster zone may experience light rain through May 29, the China Meteorological Administration said today. Sichuan's rainy season will start next month.

The government has called for 3.3 million tents and said it will build 1.5 million temporary houses for survivors.

Donations Rise

Donations from abroad and at home amounted to 32.7 billion yuan ($4.7 billion), Guo said. More than 155 governments, non- government organizations and international bodies have pledged 1.9 billion yuan, Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said in Beijing yesterday. Of that 668 million yuan has been received.

Japan is considering a request for its military to send supplies to China, the Japanese government spokesman said today.

The Japanese military is a sensitive issue in China, where millions of people died at the hands of the Japanese Imperial Army before and during World War II. Tensions between the countries have eased since 2006 and a Chinese warship docked in Japan for the first time in the postwar era in November, a visit that may be reciprocated by a Japanese naval ship.

The May 12 earthquake was the most powerful to hit China, the world's most populous country, since a magnitude 8.6 quake struck Tibet in 1950, killing 1,526 people.

A 7.5 magnitude temblor in Tangshan in the northeast killed 250,000 in 1976, according to the USGS. China's seismology department said the Sichuan quake had a magnitude of 8.

AFP, via Google News, is reporting that the misery of the Sichuan earthquake victims is being compounded by the fact that most do not have insurance:

As he stared at the rubble that was once his home, Han Jun knew he had gambled his money away -- like many others, he had no insurance to cover his losses when China's earthquake struck.

"I've got no insurance and I lost everything," shrugged Han, 30.

"I kind of knew we lived in a high-risk zone, but somehow, I never thought we'd have an earthquake like this."

He was proud of the house he had bought with his wife in Beichuan, a town near the quake epicentre, but it was among hundreds of thousands of buildings which collapsed when disaster struck on May 12.

The quake killed more than 69,000 people, according to the latest official toll Sunday from China's worst earthquake for a generation, but nearly 19,000 more are still missing.

Compounding those figures is that the mountainous area is an under-insured part of China, which in turn is an under-insured part of the world.

China's insurers do not offer quake coverage, but after government urging, some companies have agreed to compensate people who had accident insurance.

That will help many businesses -- the problem is that very few individuals had such policies.

In China, insurance penetration -- total premiums as a percentage of gross domestic product -- was just 2.7 percent in 2006, compared to Britain's 16.5 percent or neighbouring Taiwan's 14.5 percent, according to insurer Swiss Re.

Aba Prefecture, where some of the worst devastation occurred, accounts for just 0.17 percent of all premiums in southwest China's Sichuan province.

"You cannot get earthquake insurance here, you can get typhoon insurance, but not earthquake insurance," said Shi Jun, Aba's top official.

"No one dares to protect against earthquakes, because you never know when they will strike and the science is not good enough to predict earthquakes."

A peasant woman working in a field near Beichuan said she had no insurance and knew no one who had any.

"Insurance? Farmers don't have insurance," said the 30-year-old woman. "No one is thinking about money now."

She added: "I've lost my daughter and so many family members. Who can think about money?"

Historically when disaster struck in China, all victims could hope for was some assistance from the imperial government, and that mindset has survived to the present day, according to insurance professionals.

"China has long relied on state finance and public donations in disaster relief and recovery," said Pang Jiying, vice chairman of China Reinsurance (Group) Corporation, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency.

"Only about five percent of direct economic losses are covered by commercial insurance, much lower than the global average of 36 percent."

Insurance is mostly thriving in the more developed and faster-growing parts of China, including big cities such as Beijing and Shanghai.

In a relatively poor inland area like Sichuan a number of factors militate against widespread insurance coverage.

"Culture could be part of it (lack of insurance), and even more important, people think insurance is a luxury in China," said Sheng Nan, a Shanghai-based analyst with UOB Kay Hian Securities.

"First you have to take care of food, housing, clothing and education," he added.

"Because Sichuan is one of the poor provinces, they won't have much money left to buy insurance. They don't see insurance as a necessity."

This year has seen a number of calamities, beginning with the worst snow storms in decades which cost lives and caused massive loss of property.

Later the worst train accident for a decade killed 72 people, at the same time raising awareness about how misfortune can strike so unexpectedly, argued Deng Ting, a Beijing-based analyst with Guodu Securities.

"There have been lots of disasters, and this will increase people's sense of risks. Definitely more people will want to buy insurance," she said.

From Reuters:

The wild corner of China, home to most of the world's giant pandas suffered serious damage in last month's earthquake, state media reported on Thursday.

At least eight percent of the endangered bear's habitat was completely destroyed and experts have still not been able to assess casualties, the official Xinhua news agency said.

Only 1,590 pandas still live in the wild, all in China, and about 1,400 were in the part of the southwestern province of Sichuan that was rocked by the May 12 earthquake.

"The dense forests covering these places have now turned into bare land," Yan Xun, a State Forestry Administration Official, was quoted as saying. "Landslides and forestry destruction pose severe threats to the lives of the surviving pandas."

The caves and tree hollows where pandas live may have collapsed, torn-up land likely polluted some of their drinking water and paths to their food sources may have been blocked, Xinhua said.

"It is still too dangerous for our staff to go into the field. When conditions allow, we will search the area and see if there are injured pandas that need help," Yan said.

The earthquake also devastated Sichuan's Wolong research centre, the world's most important panda reserve, killing one panda with another still missing. Reuters:Reuters

From The Times (UK)more disturbing news about the effect of the Sichuan earthquake on China's endangered panda population:


The lives of 90 per cent of China's endangered pandas are now in jeopardy after last month's massive earthquake devastated the remote mountain corner that is their last remaining habitat.

Already boxed into these steep and thickly forested hillsides by the advance of man, its numbers limited by a slow rate of reproduction and with its food supply threatened by the regular flowering and death of its favourite arrow bamboo, the panda must now be facing its most severe crisis in decades.

Chinese officials, usually reluctant to reveal the real extent of a crisis, have announced that the last 1,590 pandas living in the wild face a very uncertain future after the earthquake.

Yan Xun, an official at the State Forestry Administration responsible for China's flora and fauna, said: "Their living environment is completely destroyed. Massive landslides and large scale damage to forests triggered by last month's earthquake are threatening the existence of wild pandas.”

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The fate of the pandas has been a cause of concern since the awesome May 12 tremor, which cut off access to large swathes of mountainous areas, including China's largest panda breeding centre in Wolong. One giant panda from the Wolong reserve was buried this week after its body was found crushed under the fallen walls of its pen. Another is still missing. The other 51 are safe, including 14 cubs carried by their keepers out of the reserve to the safety of a wooden hut, placed under 24-hour guard, nearby in the Wolong valley.

But the fate of the 1,400 pandas living in the quake-hit regions — about 88 percent of the total — remains unknown and a source of growing anxiety. The tremor damaged 1.9 million hectares (4.7 million acres), or 83 per cent of China's total panda habitat.

The real extent of the damage could be even worse because landslides have blocked roads, preventing officials from assessing some areas.

Mr Yan said: “Caves and tree hollows where giant pandas live may be damaged, water in the habitat is polluted, and some of the bamboo is buried or smashed.”

He said it was almost certain that the earthquake had claimed more pandas among its victims. “There must have been wild pandas crushed to death during the quake and in the aftershocks. But we do not have the number.”

It was still far too dangerous for researchers to venture into these remote mountain areas to try to assess the ravages on a population that had grown in recent years.

Of the 55 protected reserves where wild pandas roam, 49 have been affected by the earthquake. Landslides have toppled whole mountainsides, possibly burying many of the iconic black and white animals. Other rockfalls have blocked the usual passages that the panda — a solitary animal — follows between the reserves in search of food or to find a mate.

Zhang Zhihe, head of the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding that is the headquarters of China's hugely successful campaign to save the panda through artificial insemination, said that he was also anxious that the devastation of the mountain terrain could deprive the wild panda of access to bamboo.

He told The Times: “The pandas now cannot make their way between different mountains because of the landslides and so they may not be able to find food.”

It has taken China years to create these reserves, linked by corridors along which the pandas can move with the minimum of encroachment by man. Now these corridors will almost certainly have to be recreated.

Mr Zhang said: “As a wild animal, the panda has the capacity to survive in the short-term. But the danger lies in its longer term survival with the damage to the ecology