China's leaders face political aftershocks

A need for a tighter grip and a stronger government response is especially urgent in the smaller, rural communities of quake-shattered Sichuan. Distrust of local officials seen as corrupt and indifferent is already high in such areas across China, causing protests to soar in the past decade.

Families in at least two towns where schools collapsed and killed their children have protested or threatened to take local officials to court, suspecting shoddy construction.

Their cries amplified by state media under the freer constraints last week touched off a national outcry over chronic underfunding of schools, poor construction and corruption. Newspapers ran reports saying seismologists previously predicted a massive quake in Sichuan and raised questions whether the government failed to warn people. Web sites ran comments accusing local officials of taking relief supplies for their relatives first.

Such suspicions were evident in Xinhua. "I've been waiting here for two hours for a tent and the government hasn't told us anything. The local government has really been useless," said a woman surnamed Chen who refused to give her name because she was afraid of government harassment.

No government officials turned up to talk with the farmers, who mixed their anger at the officials with praise for the soldiers.

Shop owner Li Bai alleged local officials needed to be bribed to get anything done. But he also said President Hu Jintao, who toured the disaster zone over the weekend, and other central government leaders were capable of getting things done.

"After Hu Jintao came here, they finally started taking this disaster seriously," he said. "The central government just doesn't know how corrupt the officials are here. They just need to come more often to see it for themselves."

In a sign its aware of such complaints, a report Wednesday on the Web site of the State Council, the Cabinet, threatened officials with punishment if they misused relief funds or supplies.

At the same time, the government signaled it wanted state media to heed Beijing's orders and not stir up public passions. A notice on the Web site of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television — a media regulator — said media should "gather their minds and resources around the directives from the central government and ... cover the disaster rescue and relief efforts with a high sense of political responsibility."

"Maybe the criticism will harm the rebuilding effort because the local people's mindsets are already unstable," said Shao Peiren, a mass media professor at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou. "So responsible media should see the bigger picture."

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