Typhoon hits eastern China

[PostWhore]

A typhoon hit the city of Taizhou in eastern China on Sunday after nearly one million people had been evacuated from flimsy coastal and hillside huts to safety. Forecasters had predicted the storm, Typhoon Khanun would make a direct hit on the island of Taiwan on Saturday. Instead it made landfall in China's mountainous Zhejiang province where storms regularly trigger fatal floods and landslides. A city government spokesmansaid the army conducted the evacuations and took people to schools, railway stations, hotels and other solid buildings for protection. Details of damage and casualties were not expected until Monday.



one million evacuated, nowthats a government which cares!

[VeriSexy]

Originally Posted by PostWhore

A typhoon hit the city of Taizhou in eastern China on Sunday after nearly one million people had been evacuated from flimsy coastal and hillside huts to safety. Forecasters had predicted the storm, Typhoon Khanun would make a direct hit on the island of Taiwan on Saturday. Instead it made landfall in China's mountainous Zhejiang province where storms regularly trigger fatal floods and landslides. A city government spokesmansaid the army conducted the evacuations and took people to schools, railway stations, hotels and other solid buildings for protection. Details of damage and casualties were not expected until Monday.



one million evacuated, nowthats a government which cares!

Asia is always hit with typhoons and they know how to handle it very well. Actually USA has been hit by quite a few hurricanes but still.............

[Scott McD]

Originally Posted by PostWhore

one million evacuated, nowthats a government which cares!

Or maybe the people there aren't so dumb...

[sperbonzo]

Originally Posted by PostWhore

one million evacuated, nowthats a government which cares!

Unlike the Mayor of New Orleans!

[Doctor Dre]

Thing is, they don't really gotta tell people about the death count ... unlike the media arround here . There are probably more deads there then in NO...

[VeriSexy]

Originally Posted by Doctor Dre

Thing is, they don't really gotta tell people about the death count ... unlike the media arround here . There are probably more deads there then in NO...

Actually things have changed in China, allot of stuff gets reported now. Please have access to the internet with proxys and shit spreads really fast. I think they have more internet users than the US.

Great wall of secrecy is crumbling
From Jane Macartney in Beijing



TAKING a giant step towards greater transparency, China?s highly secretive Government is to publish death tolls from natural disasters. The move could prevent the kind of cover-up by regional authorities two years ago over the spread of Sars.
Hu Jintao, the President, responded by sacking senior officials and declaring a need for more openness.



The National Administration for the Protection of State Secrets said: ?Declassification of these figures is conducive to boosting our disaster prevention and relief work.?

The decision is a significant step towards ?ruling according to law? and ?building a transparent government?, it said. Such a sensitive step would not have been taken without President Hu?s approval. It is almost certainly part of his drive to portray himself as a man of the people in the image of early Communist leaders.

Xiao Zhou, Professor of Sociology at People?s University in Beijing, said: ?This is a very big step forward from the days of Mao. Then everything was a secret, including Mao?s birthday, his height, his weight, his wife?s name; and it was the same with natural disasters.?

Deaths in natural disasters have gone mostly unreported because of secrecy laws and because the Communist Party saw them as damaging to its reputation. But in recent years, with the proliferation of local newspapers, bad news has been harder to suppress. Reports of disasters appear with increasing frequency and little delay.

Tens of millions of people are believed to have died in natural and man-made disasters since the Communists gained power in 1949. An estimated 20 million to 40 million people died during a three-year famine that began in 1959 and has been blamed on Mao Zedong?s Great Leap Forward in 1958, in which he urged farmers to leave the fields and make steel in back-yard furnaces.

Attempts to obtain figures from disasters, from earthquakes to typhoons, can result in jail terms for stealing, or leaking, state secrets, which can be anything that affects China?s interests or security. The Communist Party often uses the hazy definition to silence critics. It has been imbued with secrecy since its foundation as an underground movement whose members were hunted by warlords, rival Nationalists and Japanese invaders.

Mr Hu, who took office in 2002, must feel more confident about his power as he consolidates his authority through the provinces, installing his own people into key positions. But he remains an authoritarian leader of a secretive government.

It was unclear if figures for past disasters would be published. Attempts to obtain details from the National Administration for the Protection of State Secrets were in vain: the telephone number is classified.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...777821,00.html

[PostWhore]

it says 7 people died

[VeriSexy]

Lethal Typhoon Khanun Hits Northeast China; Nine Deaths Reported

At least nine people have lost their lives, many more are injured or missing, and more than one million have been evacuated as Typhoon Khanun lashed China's Zheijang province with high winds and torrential rains.

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The typhoon, the 15th to hit the Chinese mainland this year, caused huge waves, flooded many coastal towns, uprooted trees and caused widespread electrical failures.

For a while Khanun threatened Shanghai, forcing flight cancellations, but after it came ashore it lost some force, and has now been downgraded to a tropical storm, as it moves further into Northeastern China.

http://www.insurancejournal.com/news...9/12/59363.htm

[dynastoned]

Originally Posted by PostWhore

A typhoon hit the city of Taizhou in eastern China on Sunday after nearly one million people had been evacuated from flimsy coastal and hillside huts to safety. Forecasters had predicted the storm, Typhoon Khanun would make a direct hit on the island of Taiwan on Saturday. Instead it made landfall in China's mountainous Zhejiang province where storms regularly trigger fatal floods and landslides. A city government spokesmansaid the army conducted the evacuations and took people to schools, railway stations, hotels and other solid buildings for protection. Details of damage and casualties were not expected until Monday.



one million evacuated, nowthats a government which cares!

considering there are about 5 billion people in china one million evacuated probably isn't half the people that live in that area. just a thought....

[VeriSexy]

Originally Posted by dynastoned

considering there are about 5 billion people in china one million evacuated probably isn't half the people that live in that area. just a thought....

LOL China population is only 1.3 billion

http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/.../2119rank.html

BTW, I guess China would have surpases USA in internet usages or is very close to it. China only have 94 Million in 2004

http://www.internetworldstats.com/articles/art045.htm

China's Internet users top 100 million

BEIJING - China's population of Internet users has surpassed 100 million, the government said Tuesday.

China already has the world's second-largest population of people online after the United States, which has 135 million.

The latest Chinese figure was announced by Xi Guohua, an official with the Ministry of Information Industry, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

Last week, China's government threatened to shut down Web sites that fail to register with regulators in a new campaign to tighten controls on what the public can see online.

China's communist government promotes Internet use for education and business but also tries to block its public from seeing material deemed pornographic or subversive.

Authorities also are trying to tighten controls on what children can see online.

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8392774/