China estimates 4,000 children orphaned in quake

MIANYANG, China - Last week's deadly earthquake in China has created more than 4,000 orphans, a Chinese official said.
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But Chen Kefu, the deputy director for civil affairs in hard-hit Sichuan province, warned at a news conference Wednesday that it will take time to determine the real number of parentless children because of the large number of people still missing and displaced.

The May 12 quake has killed more than 41,000 people and left more than 5 million homeless.

Thousands of Chinese have called government offices and posted their pleas online to adopt an orphan from the quake.

"Every day my ministry receives hundreds of calls," Jiang Li, China's vice minister of civil affairs, told a news conference Tuesday.

The earthquake also robbed many parents of their children, many of whom were killed when their schools collapsed. Chinese newspapers ran photos of piles of dusty bookbags and of small hands emerging from the rubble.

But officials say adoptions won't begin until the earthquake-affected area is brought under order. Until then, local governments will take care of the orphans.

"We've received many inquiries about adoptions, but at present it's simply too early since we're still in the rescue and recovery stage," said Wang Jun of the Chinese Foundation for Poverty Alleviation, who's handling orphan issues in the city of Deyang on the edge of the quake zone.

Officials are first scrambling to reunite children with family members. Newspapers have run children's photos and names, asking the public for help. Posters with similar information has been posted at the sports stadium in the city of Mianyang, which has turned into a massive relief camp for thousands of survivors.

China is the top source of foreign adopted children in the United States, and many Americans have already contacted adoption agencies about earthquake orphans.

However, "I think the Chinese government will start with domestic adoption first," said Joshua Zhong, the co-founder and president of the U.S.-based Chinese Children Adoption International

By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN, Associated Press Writer

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China sends emergency relief to quake-hit panda

BEIJING (Reuters) - China has sent emergency bamboo-shoot rations to pandas at a reserve in the Sichuan earthquake zone because no one there is collecting it for them, state media said on Thursday.

China's most devastating earthquake in decades killed 47 people around its largest panda breeding centre in the southwest, a government website said on Wednesday.
A panda cub plays at the Wolong Conservation and Research Centre for the Giant Panda in this January 11, 2007 file photo. China has sent emergency bamboo-shoot rations to pandas at the reserve in the Sichuan earthquake zone because no one there is collecting it for them, state media said on Thursday. (REUTERS/China Daily/Files)

Thirty-five others at the Wolong Conservation and Research Centre for the Giant Panda were seriously injured, the State Forestry Administration said.

The government had sent 4,500 kg of bamboo, 1,050 kg of bamboo shoots and huge quantities of apples, soybean, eggs, milk powder and other food items to feed the giant pandas at the centre, the newspaper said.

"The supply of bamboo had been suspended because people stopped collecting it from the mountains after the quake," the China Daily quoted a wildlife protection official as saying.

Two of the centre's 53 pandas were injured and six went missing. But four had returned by Tuesday and the injured had received medical treatment, the newspaper said.

Eight pandas, chosen to entertain tourists during the Olympic Games, have been sent to the provincial capital of Chengdu and will be flown to Beijing on Saturday.

The centre suffered extensive damage because it is just 30 km from the epicentre of the May 12 quake which is estimated to have killed 50,000 people.

"There was only water (for the pandas) for a few days after the quake," Xiong Beirong, a Sichuan provincial forestry department official, was quoted as saying.

Most of the about 1,590 pandas living in China's wild are found in Sichuan. The rest of them are in Shaanxi and Gansu provinces. Another 180 have been bred in captivity.

The Wolong centre is deep in the mountains north of Chengdu along a winding, two-lane road that was partially blocked by landslides after the quake.

(Reporting by Nick Macfie)

Copyright © 2008 Reuters

More than 80,000 dead or missing in China quake

BEIJING (Reuters) - More than 80,000 people are now confirmed dead or missing after China's worst earthquake in decades, the government said on Thursday.
Parents holding portraits of their dead children attend a memorial service at a primary school in earthquake-hit Wufu town in Sichuan province May 21, 2008. More than 80,000 people are now confirmed dead or missing after China's worst earthquake in decades, the government said on Thursday. (REUTERS/Jason Lee)

Previously, authorities had said they expected the final death toll to exceed 50,000.

State Council Information Office figures showed that the number of dead now exceeded 51,000, an increase of 10,000 on the previous day's toll. It said more than 29,000 were still missing.

The State Council (cabinet) added that more than 288,000 people had been injured by the 7.9 magnitude quake in southwest China on May 12.

Hundreds of aftershocks, heavy snow in mountains close to the epicentre and a forecast of more rain have compounded difficulties for military, government and private workers trying to deliver aid and provide shelter.

Some 5 million people were left homeless by the quake. In the countryside, where countless homes are too damaged or unsafe to live in, many farmers live in encampments of makeshift shelters.

China on Thursday raised the possibility that U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon might visit Sichuan, the southwestern province worst hit by the quake.

Ban took "a message of hope" to Myanmar's cyclone victims on Thursday and pressed the military government to allow large-scale international aid for the 2.4 million people left destitute.

"As to whether or not Ban Ki-moon will come to China, especially the disaster zone, after visiting Myanmar, China is currently still in talks with the United Nations about this," Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang told a news conference.

Where Myanmar's late response to the disaster has angered Western governments and aid donors, China's quick efforts have won worldwide praise.

"I think it is not an exaggeration to say that this is probably the most swift and effective response to a large-scale natural disaster in peacetime by any government in history," said Wenran Jiang, a political scientist at the University of Alberta.

The government again appealed to the international community to offer tents and materials to build temporary housing, saying that they needed more than 3 millions tents and that just 400,000 had so far reached the disaster zone.

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