Three days of mourning are over and the Olympic torch relay has resumed, but the earthquake aftermath will trouble China for years to come. More than 51,000 have died and 29,000 are missing. Five million are homeless and 300,000 are injured. Officials in Beijing say hundreds of dams have been damaged, and that landslides have created 30 new lakes behind fragile mud flows. The UN has praised China for unprecedented openness since the quake struck a week and a half ago, but a return to restrictions on news coverage seems to be under way. We update the damage and the risks to come. Can an authoritarian government survive the free flow of information?
Political Aftershocks of the Earthquake in China
Credits
Guests:
- Mark Magnier - Los Angeles Times
- Orville Schell - Asia Society - @orvilleschell
- Xiao Qiang - Professor of Journalism, University of California-Berkeley
- Daniel Bell - Professor of Political Philosophy, Tsinghua University