Eating their Young

From this morning's NY Times:

The earthquake’s destruction of Xinjian Primary School was swift and complete. Hundreds of children were crushed as the floors collapsed in a deluge of falling bricks and concrete .... another local primary school, Beijie, catering to children of the elite, was in such good condition that local officials were using it as a refugee center.

"This is not a natural disaster," said Ren Yongchang, whose 9-year-old son died inside the destroyed school. His hands were covered in plaster dust as he stood beside the rubble, shouting and weeping as he grabbed the exposed steel rebar of a broken concrete column. "This is not good steel. It doesn’t meet standards. They stole our children."

They export toxic toys to the children of the world for profit. Why should we be surprised to find out that they largely fail to protect the least of their own against natural disasters?

Tragically, sometimes it takes a disaster to melt hard hearts and mobilize people to regulate business as usual. That doesn't justify the death of even one innocent child, but it is brutal reality.

And it sounds like China has its own version of the Bush Administration's No Child Left Behind:

Xinjian was poorly built when it opened its doors in 1992 ... and never got its share of government funds for reconstruction because of its low ranking in the local education bureaucracy and the low social status of its students.