China: Natural Disasters No Longer Secret

[Judi Lynn]

China: Natural Disasters No Longer Secret
Monday, September 12, 2005
Associated Press

SHANGHAI, China — China will no longer consider death tolls and other relevant information about natural disasters to be state secrets, an official said Monday, saying the move was aimed at boosting government transparency.

"Declassification of these figures and materials is conducive to boosting our disaster prevention and relief work," said Shen Yon (search)gshe, spokesman for the National Administration for the Protection of State Secrets (search).

That marks a major step toward "administering according to law" and "building a transparent government," Shen was quoted by the official Xinhua News Agency as telling a news conference.

No details were given and it wasn't known what prompted the declassification move, which Shen said took effect last month.

China has recently passed a series of laws and taken other moves to strengthen its legal and regulatory structure and boost government efficiency.
(snip/...)

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,169105,00.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Apparently, we can't expect _Bush to be as honest as the Chinese government. Pity.

[texpatriot2004]

1. What's to become of America if China is more transparent than

we are?

:shrug:

[cire4]

2. Good for China.....Their democratic transition will obviously

be much slower and much more characterized by "baby steps," such as these, than that in the Soviet Union.

And looking at the disaster that followed in Russia, maybe reforming the economy before lifting political controls ain't such a bad idea in the long term.

Either way, I predict China will be a democratic country in 20 years. Rising wealth, an emerging middle class, and a more educated populace almost necessitates it.

[ikri]

3. Chinese government gloating?

They've had a couple of typhoons hit recently where they've managed to evacuate hundreds of thousands of people from the areas affected.

Are they simply trying to annoy the US government by saying "We can evacuate our people from the path of a devastating storm and suffer very little loss of life"? Telling the world's press that they had 50 people die but managed to evacuate 750,000 sounds extremely good compared to the response to Hurricane Katrina

[truthisfreedom]

4. apparently transparent. you KNOW they'll model their fake transparency

on bushco's.