Expressing Condolences and Sympathy to the People of Sichuan Province, China

EXPRESSING CONDOLENCES AND SYMPATHY TO THE PEOPLE OF SICHUAN PROVINCE, CHINA -- (House of Representatives - May 20, 2008)

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. I thank my good friend for yielding, Madam Speaker, and I especially want to thank Mr. Wu, the gentleman from Oregon, for offering this very important resolution, and I'm very proud to be one of the cosponsors.

Madam Speaker, when a friend is struck by a tragedy, perhaps the death of a family member, we all know what to do. We call them up, we visit with them, we reach out to them. And that's what they need at that moment, to know that they are not alone, that they are accompanied by friends.

I think that is with nations as well. When tragedy strikes a nation, other nations have to reach out and remind them that they are part of a great human family and that other nations grieve with them. So it is right that our country should make this gesture after the tragedy that struck the great Chinese people.

Madam Speaker, lest anyone doubt the importance of this gesture, let me remind them of the outpouring of support that came from every corner of the globe after the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001. That meant so much to us.

Madam Speaker, many of us in this House number Chinese human rights activists among our friends, and among the list of people we admire most are people like Harry Wu, Joseph Kung, Wei Jingsheng, Bob Fu, and so many others come to mind. Over the past 10 days, I have been reminded of them as I have seen their mixture of practical earnestness and great generosity in the Chinese people's response to this tragedy, the outpouring of help from everywhere throughout China. The Chinese people continually amaze me for their willingness to stand by the unfortunate and the oppressed, and that sentiment is very strong among the people.

So, Madam Speaker, let us ask God to comfort all of those who have lost family members and friends in this terrible earthquake. I hope we can remember particularly the parents. Several days ago, I read an article in the Los Angeles Times, which I will enter into the Record, which reminds us, as

[Page: H4211]

the headline says, ``One-Child Policy Adds to the Grief of China Quake.'' This is in the L.A. Times.

In Chinese culture, parents shower an extraordinary love on their children, investing their time and hope in them. The Chinese Government has cruelly and forcibly prevented most mothers and fathers from having more than one child, making brothers and sisters literally illegal. Now these parents have lost that one child. So we need to keep them in our prayers as well.

China's 1-Child Policy Causes Extra Pain
(By Christopher Bodeen)

After their daughter was born, Bi Kaiwei and his wife, Meilin, decided to adhere to China's one-child policy and its slogan, ``Have fewer kids, live better lives.''

For them and other couples who lost an only child in this week's massive earthquake, the tragedy has been doubly cruel. Robbed of their sole progeny and a hope for the future, they find it even harder to restart their shattered lives, haunted by added guilt, regret and gnawing loss.

``She died before becoming even a young adult,'' said Bi, an intense, wiry chemical plant worker, standing beside the grave of 13-year-old Yuexing--one of dozens sprinkled amid fields of ripened spring wheat and newly planted rice. ``She never really knew what life was like.''

Yuexing, a bright sixth-grader, was in school when Monday's quake struck, bringing the Fuxin No. 2 Primary School crashing down, killing her and 200 other students. Teachers had locked all but one of the school's doors during break time, parents said, leaving only a single door to escape through.

Many among the more than 22,000 people killed across central China were students in school. Nearly 6,900 classrooms collapsed, government officials said Friday, in an admission that highlighted a chronically underfunded education system especially in small towns and compounded the anger of many Chinese over the quake.

In Wufu, a farming village two hours north of the Sichuan provincial capital of Chengdu, most of the dead students were a couple's only child--born under a policy launched in the late 1970s to limit many families to one offspring. The policy was meant to rein in China's exploding population and ensure better education and health care.

The ``one-child policy'' has been contentious inside China as well as out. The government says it has prevented an additional 400 million births. But critics say it has also led to forced abortions, sterilizations and a dangerously imbalanced sex ratio as local authorities pursue sometimes severe birth quotas set by Beijing and families abort girls out of a traditional preference for male heirs. The policy is law but there are exceptions.

Farther down the lane from where Yuexing is buried, 10 more graves were laid out, some accompanied by favorite items--textbooks for English and music, a pencil box, a Chinese chess set. At one, grandmother threw herself to the dirt and wailed as her husband lit a handful of ``spirit paper'' believed to comfort the dead in the afterlife.

Another bereaved parent, Sang Jun, stood where his daughter, Rui, is buried, a simple mound of dirt beside his quake-shattered farmhouse. The house is surrounded by burned bushes--a traditional disinfectant. ``The house is gone and the child is dead,'' said Sang, who wore a T-shirt and plastic sandals. His parents, both in their 70s, looked on with tears in their eyes.

Resistance by ordinary Chinese has forced Beijing to relax the policies, allowing many rural families to have a second child if the first was a girl. But in Wufu, the family planning committee seems to have prevailed on most families to stop at one child. Slogans daubed on boundary walls and houses all along the rutted country road leading to Wufu call on families to ``stabilize family planning and create a brighter future.''

Standing in the rubble of the school holding his daughter's ID and a posed shot taken at a local salon, Bi--pronounced ``Bee''--said starting a new family, either by having another child or adoption, is simply imponderable.

``I'm 37 years old and my child was 13. If we were to do it again, I'd be 50 when this stage comes along,'' Bi said.

Parents who lose children in disasters often feel intense guilt for what they see as a failure to protect them, said psychology professor Shi Zhanbiao. Parents, he said, may also recall their past relationships with their children with regret, thinking they were too stern, did not show them sufficient love or did not interact with them enough.

``They'll think that if they just hadn't sent their children to school that day, they would have been saved,'' said Shi, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Science in Beijing.

The loss is intensified for those with no other offspring to lavish with care and affection, Shi said. And in China, other, more practical concerns may also come into play because children are generally expected to care for their aging parents.

``They'll be worried about the future, because for the later part of their lives, they'll have no one to depend on,'' Shi said.

Bi said Yuexing was polite and smart. She had won a coveted place at the county's best high school on the recommendation of a teacher. She was a top student who got better after the family moved closer to school to reduce her commuting time, said Bi, who completed high school but failed the national university entrance exam.

In her pictures, Yuexing, whose name combined the Chinese characters for moon and star, is smiling and demure. The studio shot shows her wearing a bright yellow sweater and looking playfully over her shoulder.

Parents in Wufu said they plan to bring a formal complaint over what they say was corruption and malfeasance in construction of the school. They say officials moved the students from a group of one-story classrooms--all of which survived the quake--into a modern-looking, but unsafe building.

``We have nothing else, no other wish but to win justice for our children,'' said Sang's wife, Zhao Jing. ``We put all our hopes on these kids, and this is the return we get.''

--

[From the Los Angeles Times, May 15, 2008]

One-Child Policy Adds to the Grief of China Quake
(By Ching-Ching Ni)

XINGFU, CHINA.--On Sunday, Liu Li received a simple Mother's Day present from her only child: a basket of red, pink and white carnations wrapped in purple rice paper. That afternoon, her 15-year-old boy returned to boarding school knowing he had made his mother the happiest woman in their village.

Liu and her husband never thought about defying China's one-child policy. They already had everything they could hope for in a son. Meng Hao was not only a good student and star athlete, he was even the tallest kid around.

On Wednesday, the Mother's Day flowers were still fresh in the family's living room, next to rows of certificates of merit from Hao's school years. But Liu's beloved boy was dead.

``When I heard he was gone, my whole body went numb,'' she said. ``I felt the sky falling.''

As the death toll rises from the worst earthquake to hit China in 30 years, Sichuan province has become a valley of sadness. Schools were among the most badly damaged buildings, and some of the most grief-stricken residents are parents who lost an only child.

Liu, 38, slumped Wednesday in a chair in a makeshift tent among the wheat fields here. Not only are parents mourning the loss of a cherished child; the next generation is expected to look after their parents in old age in a society where the safety net is disappearing. And many in Chinese society regard people in their late 30s and early 40s as too old to have another child.

In Sichuan, one of China's most populous provinces, the government's one-child policy is strictly enforced among poor farmers.

``I'd say 90% of the people around here have only one child,'' said Wang Xia, hugging her 5-year-old daughter close after finding the girl with big, round eyes and two long braids alive at her kindergarten. ``It takes a lot of money to raise children--we farmers have a hard time even supporting ourselves; how can we afford to pay fines to have more?''

The name of this town, Xingfu, means Happiness. But it has become a hell for parents who at first thought they had escaped the tragedy. When disaster struck Monday, Hao's parents raced to the nearby school and helped dig through the rubble.

First there was good news.

After being trapped under broken concrete for eight hours, Hao was rescued.

``He kept saying, `I am OK, I want to go home,' '' said his father, Meng Daoling, 44.

``When he was buried under all that debris, he told me he kept thinking of his parents. He held on for eight hours so he could see us again,'' said his mother, tears streaming down her face.

To their shock, a few hours after that brief reunion, their son died about an hour away at a hospital in Chengdu, where he had been rushed for treatment.

Like so many people here, Hao's parents had done everything they could to give him a good education. His father drives a tractor.

In addition to toiling in the family field, his mother works long hours at a factory making bottle caps.

Boarding school costs a bit more than regular school, but for many rural children, schools are too far for daily travel, so they live there.

``Everybody knew him,'' a villager said of Hao. ``He was nearly 6 feet tall. He wanted to go to college and be a pilot.''

One of Hao's schoolmates who escaped the falling building said he survived because his teacher told the students to run from the first-floor classroom when the magnitude 7.9 quake rocked the country.

``There were 66 students in our class. All but seven or eight made it out alive,'' said Ba Cong, 14.

He thinks he probably survived because he was in the second row. ``I sat in the front because I am nearsighted. The people who didn't make it sat in the back.''

Hao was in a third-floor classroom. Most of the students there were trapped.

``He told me his teacher told them, `Don't run, duck,' '' his mother said.

Parents say the school was built in the early 1990s--old by Chinese standards--and that students were to move into a new building next year.

Bitter villagers suspect shoddy construction is partly to blame for the catastrophe.

``Even our humble rural homes built by hand didn't collapse completely,'' said villager Gong Fuzhong. ``How can a big school

[Page: H4212]

building collapse? Something is definitely wrong here.''

Across an open field filled with makeshift shelters, another mother, Zheng Hongqun, 40, was so paralyzed by grief that she hadn't been able to get out of bed.

The body of her 15-year-old son, Wen Zheng, was pulled from the rubble about 24 hours after the earthquake.

``His father is a migrant worker far away in northeastern China so his son can have money to go to school,'' said neighbor Wang Xia. ``We only told him he is still being rescued. We don't dare tell him the truth.''

Outside their temporary shelter, a plastic tarp wrapped over sticks, Zheng's grandparents were surrounded by neighbors trying to distract them from the tragedy. It wasn't working.

``The child is gone. We can never see him again,'' Wen's silver-haired grandmother sobbed. ``It should have been us.''

--

Parents' Losses Compounded By China's One-Child Policy

SICHUAN, CHINA.--Li Yunxia wipes away tears as rescue crews dig through the ruins of a kindergarten class that has buried her only child--a 5-year-old boy.

Other parents wail as soldiers in blue masks trudge through the mud, hauling bodies from the rubble on stretchers.

``Children were screaming, but I couldn't hear my son's voice,'' she says, sobbing.

This grim ritual repeated itself Thursday across southwestern China, as thousands of mothers and fathers await news about their sons and daughters.

The death toll from Monday's massive earthquake could be as high as 50,000, according to state-run media.

The grief is compounded in many cases by a Chinese policy that limits most couples to one child, a measure meant to control explosive population growth.

As a result of the one-child policy, the quake--already responsible for at least 15,000 deaths--is producing another tragic aftershock:

Not only must thousands of parents suddenly cope with the loss of a child but many must cope with the loss of their only child.

China's population minister recently praised the one-child rule, which dates to 1979, saying it has prevented 400 million children from being born.

Some wealthy families ignore the order, have more children and pay a $1,000 fine. In rural areas--like earthquake-devastated Sichuan province--families can petition for an additional child, but there's no guarantee the authorities will approve the request--they usually don't.

That reality has cast parents like Li into an agonizing limbo--waiting to discover whether their only child is alive or dead.

Thousands of children were in class when the temblor hit Monday afternoon. Many of their schools collapsed on top of them.

In Dujiangyan City, more than 300 students were feared dead when Juyuan Middle School collapsed with 900 students inside. A similar number died at the city's Xiang'e Middle School.

Now parents cluster outside collapsed school buildings, held back by soldiers in some cases as rescue crews search for signs of life.

``Which grade are you in?'' a rescuer asks a trapped child in Beichuan County.

``Grade 2,'' comes the answer.

``Hang on for a while,'' he says. ``We are figuring out ways to rescue you.''

The child is pulled from the rubble a short time later.

Madam Speaker, again I want to thank Mr. Wu for sponsoring this resolution. We need to express our solidarity with those who have lost so much. This resolution does it very, very well.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source