China and Haiti

The earthquake and relief effort in Haiti have dominated the news in America. CCTV News has also conducted pieces on the Chinese relief effort and the stories of Chinese soldiers and relief workers in Haiti. Even though there have been several stories like this in from Chinese news sources, the coverage of Haiti has been noticeably less here.

James Fallows of The Atlantic has this to say on the subject:

In this post yesterday I quoted a reader's comparison of U.S. response to the Haitian disaster -- which for America is right next-door -- with the much more modest mainland Chinese response. The reader said that this was one sign of the difference in the overall dimensions of national influence between the US and China.

Then another reader -- rather, one of many -- pointed out that a reason for the difference might be that Haiti is one of the 20+ countries still to maintain diplomatic relations with Taiwan, rather than with the PRC government in Beijing, thus dampening mainland Chinese enthusiasm. I also noted that, as of the time I posted, the announced contribution from Taiwan was also relatively modest - about half a million dollars.

Two updates since then: current reports show that the Taiwan government has committed at least $5 million to Haitian relief, with more possibly on the way. The PRC government has also added to its initial commitment. I have no interest in turning a historic catastrophe into an arena for mainland-Taiwan rivalry, nor do I think dollar-counts are the real point here. (After the Sichuan earthquake in May 2008, comparative donation-counts for big Chinese companies or famous Chinese people took a really unpleasant turn inside China, with campaigns of internet denunciation for those who seemed to be falling behind in the count.) Just updating the initial donation report, for the record.

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