China Acts Quickly To Resettle Refugees

The earthquake that hit China's Sichuan province last week has spawned one of the world's largest refugee crises in recent memory -- now an estimated five million homeless people. China's government is responding by applying Communist Party organizational strategy and lots of $460 houses.

The total number of homeless, announced by a Civil Affairs Bureau spokeswoman Tuesday, means China is facing a larger-scale homeless problem than the more-than one million displaced in the U.S. after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 or the three million left homeless by the Pakistan earthquake the same year. The tsunami that hit 12 Asian countries the previous year left an estimated one million homeless.

Eight days into China's worst natural disaster in decades, the task of saving lives from the destructive quake is quickly being replaced by an equally difficult challenge -- a massive relief effort for millions of survivors.

'We are focusing our attention on the relocation of affected people and ensuring their livelihood,' said China's vice minister of civil affairs, Jiang Li.

To address homelessness, China is applying hallmarks of its economic miracle: low-cost, fast production, propelled by state involvement.

In Dujiangyan, a neighborhood of $460 Styrofoam houses is the near-term answer to the housing problem, and its walls are going in as quickly as concrete floors can dry. At a stadium in Mianyang, where more than 25,000 refugees have sought shelter, institutions of the Communist Party have divided the floor space into 'districts' that will soon take over handling refugee affairs, including doling out food and cash.

The $460 houses in Dujiangyan are designed to be ready for 2,000 families in fewer than two weeks, says chief engineer Huang Liang. The 15-square-meter structures will each have front and back windows, as well as electricity, with public kitchen and bathroom facilities at the end of each block. The design is usually used for construction workers.

Since Saturday, workers have been on the job 24 hours a day, smoothing the grounds of what was a construction dump until last week and then immediately pumping concrete into wooden frames from what will ultimately be cement from 60 mixing trucks. Then, with the concrete only partially dried, workers bolt down walls made of about 30 centimeters of Styrofoam that is sandwiched between thin layers of drywall, all of it held up by metal frames. Tinted green windows are hauled off a truck and pressed into the walls.

There are few answers to more-permanent solutions to the widespread displacement of people, many of whom have no insurance or resources to fall back on because all their savings were invested in building their now-destroyed homes.

Mr. Huang, the engineer, says his state-run, Chengdu-based construction company has suspended more than 90,000 square meters of other construction to devote its time to relief-related building. Mr. Huang says he isn't sure who will ultimately bear costs, noting 'first we build it.'

As construction begins, tent cities are sprouting up everywhere, making sidewalks and parks look like campsites. The government estimates as many as 1.5 million tents will be needed, some of them for people whose homes in places like Chengdu are standing but who are fearful of aftershocks.

In Shifang, red, white and blue tents stretching for kilometers were being secured by People's Liberation Army soldiers on Tuesday afternoon as rain started to fall. The area is anchored with a new town center, overflowing with free food and water, plus ample medical attention from Red Cross Society of China volunteers, a post office and even cellular-phone cards from China Mobile Ltd.

The effort has impressed some outsiders. 'There's a sense of order and organization,' said retired U.S. Marine Gen. James Jones on Tuesday in Beijing.

More than 25,000 people are already decamped to a silver football stadium on the outskirts of Mianyang. Most say they are from the mountains of Beichuan County, where whole towns were left in ruins and flooding forced many to flee, first on foot and then by military vehicle. Families say they are grateful for the shelter.

Wang Yu, senior legislator in Mianyang, said the government aims to get people off the stadium floors and into tents in four or five days. The perimeter looks crowded with the 1,000 tents already there.

For now, on the stadium's upper deck, Zhu Huangcui shares two small pieces of cardboard with several family members, including her husband's brother, a 40-year-old retarded man eager to show off a cut on his arm suffered during the quake. 'There's no water, and all houses collapsed,' Ms. Zhu said of her village in Beichuan. 'Where the government tells us to go, we will go.'

At the stadium, the bathrooms smell and reflect heavy use, and there is nowhere to take a shower. But volunteers deliver candy bars to children, continually empty garbage and sweep the floor. So many people have been given a change of clothes that the old stuff is shoveled onto a dump truck for disposal elsewhere.

The government has a big head start in organizing the people at relief stations like the Mianyang stadium: a Communist Party institution known as the household-registration system, a system that basically keeps track of people with a government-issued national identification card.

Like any Chinese city, the Mianyang stadium has already been divided into districts. At the east gate of the stadium, District 16, run by local officials of the Ministry of Information Industry, has registered the ID-card details of more than 180 people with the promise they will get a 'relief card' in coming days. The card will govern distribution of a 10-yuan, or $1.43, cash subsidy per day, plus one jin, or 500 grams, of food that Beijing has promised quake victims. The districting system will also help divvy up tents and other more permanent housing, officials say.

The government's quick mobilization is credited to officials like Wu Xiaolin, a deputy of the Communist Party in Shifang. Stationed at a donation center adjacent to a strip of tents erected by the local 78187 regiment of the People's Liberation Army, she relies on a wallet-size book with all essential telephone numbers. She notes that the mayor's first meeting was conducted in the parking lot of government headquarters minutes after last week's quake. Now, the town is caring for at least 50,000 refugees, drawn from six nearby villages who are temporarily housed in 26 centers.

Ms. Wu proudly guides a visitor to the sports arena, where families have turned the running track into a tent city. 'This is the center of town, and it has a lot of space,' says Ms. Wu.

Housed on the edge of the track under a green banner advertising beer, 25 former residents of the mountain town of Honghai say they are happy to be there after an ordeal that killed many in their town, including more than half the children at an elementary school. A group of neighbors had hiked down the mountain, walking five hours until a volunteer put them in the back of his truck and delivered them to Shifang. 'The government told us to come here,' says a young woman in the group who declines to give her name. Asked when and where they will go, she says, 'how can we know?'

The government isn't alone in building homes. Behind a tent city in Shifang, a chemical company is clearing a field it owns to set down a new tent village designed for the households of 300 employees who were displaced by the quake. Earthmovers smooth the ground, and a backhoe is digging drainage, in hopes that people can move in fewer than five days, says Ma Xiaonian, a finance director on the job. 'We should finish the job as soon as possible because so many people are still homeless, and we can't wait for the government to arrange it,' says Ms. Ma.

But Ms. Ma's quick action also has had an additional impact on 48-year-old Qiu Yan. Until last week, she grew rice on the land. She and her husband knew they would someday be moved off the land, but it has all happened too soon. Since her home is unsafe, with a big slab of ceiling hanging over the stove, the couple is sleeping instead in a crude wooden lean-to and worrying her own plan to move into an apartment has been rendered impossible by the quake. 'Now we're landless farmers,' says Ms. Qiu over the din of earthmovers.

James T. Areddy
WallStreet Journal 2008-05-22