A devastating earthquake that jolted Wenchuan county in Southwestern Sichuan province on May 12 has brought a tremendous loss of human lives and property damage to China. The superb contingency response and relief operations made by the Chinese government and various walks of life in China as well as a good social order of the quake areas have amazed and moved the entire globe. And nations worldwide have also vied each other to offer a helping hand to the country.
Meanwhile, the entire world has discovered from the tragic quake the other side of China, which is a nation with frequent natural calamities and an acute shortage of per-capita resources, in spite of the vast territory and splendid civilization it has and the fast development it is undergoing.
This rare and unprecedented quake has offered the entire world a special lecture on the specific national conditions of China. People have come to know that its per-capita water reserves are only one fourth of the global average, per-capita share of farmland is less than one third of the world's per-capita amount, deserts cover a combined area of 1.3 million sq km, or constituting nearly 13 percent of the country's land space; two thirds of the nation's land area are plateaus and high mountains, which are inhabited by over half of China's total population, whereas mountains and plateaus occupy merely 20 percent of the total global land space or 40 percent of the land space in Asia.
Since China is situated at the juncture area of two seismic belts, namely, the Pacific rim seismic belt and the Eurasian seismic belt, the frequency of its quake calamities has indeed shocking, alarming and soul-stirring. Two massive, devastating quakes each with a loss of more than 100,000 human lives struck China in the 20th century. One of them occurred near Haiyuan in northwestern China's Ningxia region on Dec. 16, 1920 with a death toll of more than 230,000, and the other hit the city of Tangshan in north China's Hebei province on July 28, 1976 with a death toll of more than 240,000.
Since the beginning of the last century, China has had nearly 800 quakes with a magnitude of over 6 on the Richter scale, and quakes have wrecked all provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities, except for the provinces of Guizhou in southwest China and Zhejiang in east China, and Hong Kong and Macao. The country suffered 33 percent of the world's inland quakes in the 20th century, according to relevant statistics, and so the earthquake and other natural adversities represent one of its basic national conditions.
The recent quake has enabled the world to see more distinctly and incisively about China, as it has enabled people to understand the natural environment background generates its history and culture, and understand the cohesive power evoked by the traditional "harmony and cooperation" culture and understand the hard-working, restraint and enduring approach of the Chinese nation.
People in China have learned from countless natural disasters that how tiny or insignificant an individual person or an individual family is before the great nature and calamities, and the strength only lies within unity and harmony. The quake perhaps helps the world to recognize differences and complementarity between the "culture of harmony and cooperation" and the knight culture or a competition culture which advocate for individuality.
The joint endeavor to respond to the quake has made China's distance with the world narrower or closer, and also enabled the world to come to know China's complex national conditions and long, torturous and arduous road ahead. Confronted with this disaster, the courageous effort made by China, which had experienced untold hardships, has let the whole world see a true and respectable China, and the world's generous aid has also enabled the country to see a world with loving care. In the face of natural calamities, the humanity pools its efforts to tide over difficulties, so this is a world without mercy but also a world full of affection and compassion.
By People's Daily Online and its author is Liao Xianwang
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