Ai Weiwei also infers that it wasn’t the 2008 Sichuan earthquake that killed 5,335 children (Weiwei’s number because there has been no official death count of how many children died) but corruption in the CCP that led to shoddy construction, and every opinion Weiwei says in the film is reported as if it were a fact.
But the film leaves out many facts of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake that killed 69,195 with 18,392 missing; 374,176 injured; left 5 million people homeless of the 15 million who lived in the area with no mention that many of the schools that collapsed were built in the late 1970s before even the United States had tougher earthquake building codes.
if seventeen percent of China’s population is age 14 or less, then about 2.6 million children must have lived in the area hit by the earthquake—those children who died then represent 0.2% of the total number of children and that was much less than the 0.46% that represents deaths compared to the total population of the area. Why did Weiwei [and the western media] ignore the fact that 99.8% of children under age 14 survived?
China’s government did report that more than 7,000 inadequately engineered schoolrooms collapsed in the earthquake, but China’s critics—including Weiwei—never mention that few buildings survive an 8.0 earthquake without damage, and that this earthquake was rated the 21st deadliest earthquake of all time.
And according to Structure.org, the number of collapsed or seriously damaged structures exceeded 25 million. I think it is safe to say that most of the buildings in that area were not adequately engineered to survive an earthquake of that magnitude, and the schools that collapsed represent 0.028% of the total number of buildings damaged. I wonder if any schools survived and—if so—when were they built?
If you want a better perspective, I suggest reading The Christian Science Monitor that reported, “Earthquake engineers say that constructing a building to resist a quake of magnitude 7 or 8 is possible, but is often considered cost prohibitive” … and “Schools … are particularly vulnerable because they are often mid-sized buildings, smaller projects for contractors that are paid by [local] government bureaucracies. Two recent earthquakes in Indonesia and in Kashmir also resulted in a disproportionate [number of] student deaths.”
“Often school buildings suffer quite a bit,” said Amir Elnashnai, director of the Mid-America Earthquake Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
In addition, why is it that China is condemned for the collapse of older concrete and brick buildings during the 2008 Sichuan earthquake when The Los Angeles Times reported in October 2013 that “More than 1,000 old concrete buildings in Los Angeles and hundreds more throughout the county may be at risk of collapsing in a major earthquake, according to a Times analysis. By the most conservative estimate, as many as 50 of these buildings in the city alone would be destroyed, exposing thousands to injury or death.”
You may also be interested in reading what Sweet and Sour Socialism has to say about this controversial artist in “Detained: Ai WeiWei, Con Artist” by Yoichi Shimatsu [the 4th media]”
Simatsu is Japanese and is the former Editor of the Japan Times Weekly. Now, do you think Ai Weiwei is a hero and the documentary offers a balanced perspective of the issues discussed?
Return to Ai WeiWei is probably NEVER SORRY for anything he says or does: Part 1
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
His latest novel is the multiple-award winning Running with the Enemy.
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iLook China 
it’s nice to read a different perspective that makes you think
but that doesn’t mean I’ll agree with you
I might but first I must think
Thinking is good when you weigh all the facts and even spend some time doing research beyond opinions disguised as the truth without facts or with cherry picked facts. Too many people don’t do that. I just posted a piece about how the manipulate facts by cherry picking what makes you look like your opinion is the right one.
Here’s the title: Cherry picking facts without lying to make the bad look good or the good look bad
http://crazynormaltheclassroomexpose.com/2014/04/26/cherry-picking-facts-without-lying-to-make-the-bad-look-good-or-the-good-look-bad/
I couldn’t resist commenting. Well written!
thank you
The “news” is never about the good part. They don’t think viewers want to hear good news, so the worse the news is, the better they like it. It’s a business, not a news, decision. It isn’t made by reporters or news directors but by owners and boards of directors. Even independants like PBS have jumped on board. So in this case, it’s not about China. It’s about how news is controlled by the corporations which are entirely concerned with profit.
True. Recently I read a study that bad news tends to attract the attention of people more than good news; in addition, people tend to remember bad news more than good news in the long run. Brain scans show that when the brain deals with bad news, it uses more energy and more areas of the brain to process and this in turn flags that memory for processing later during sleep so it’s moved from short term to long term memory.
Have you read Oliver Sack’s research on the brain? You may find the piece he wrote for “The New York Review of Books” interesting.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/feb/21/speak-memory/?pagination=false
I subscribed to the Review for one year and would have continued but I don’t have time to read all the magazines and books that I get as it is so I let that one go. Fascinating stuff in there besides book reviews—intellectual stimulation of a higher order.
I also am terribly backlogged on reading … I no longer look at Amazon’s daily deals or even freebies. I need to catch up with what’s already on my plate … my overly-ambitious plans have caught up with me.
LOL
My ambitions seem to be leaving me in the dust as they rush off toward the horizon and I stumble along in their wake gasping for air.
Good intentions gone wildly awry!
So true. Slowing down is a chore. You have to say no to yourself and others. :o(