How China’s spin doctors botched the Yunnan quake response

BEIJING — What do a 23-year-old socialite and a bowl of muddy noodles have to do with China’s worst natural disaster this year?

Nothing, usually. Even so, the 6.5-magnitude earthquake that shook the remote southern Yunnan town of Ludian (population: 429,000) on Aug. 4, killing 615 and injuring 3,143, inadvertently exposed fault lines beneath the official narrative of national tragedy.

The narrative starts back in 2011 when a tin-eared drama student, calling herself "Guo Meimei" — translation: "Guo Pretty Pretty" — was propelled to web infamy by flaunting her posh lifestyle on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter.

But profile pictures of Guo, draped next to a Maserati, boasting the title “General Commercial Manager” of a Red Cross Society of China (RCSC) affiliate, lit a fire that has never ceased to smolder.

Unlike in other countries, China’s Red Cross exists under the aegis of its central government, rather than the International Red Cross. The young woman’s error of judgment thus metastasized into a national outcry over distribution of public funds.

In truth, no link was ever proved between RCSC and Guo, though that hardly mattered: The socialite remained a cancer on the country’s largest charity. In 2012, the RCSC saw donations drop to 10 percent of levels in 2008, when the 6.9-magnitude earthquake in Ya’an city, Sichuan, had stirred global sympathy.

It was among these charitable doldrums on Aug. 4, when the 6.5 hit the mountainous area south of Sichuan, that emergency services were mobilized to the breaking story — along with the Communist Party’s image crafters.

Official mouthpieces such as China Central Television, Xinhua and People’s Daily dropped coordinated footage, commentary, verse and scripture about Guo Meimei, in either a bungling attempt to absolve the Red Cross for emergency donations or simply a case of terrible timing.

The law’s capricious gaze had swiveled at an unusually stately gait — it took three years, in Guo’s case. Arrested amid mild fanfare in July for gambling, citizens learned that the inexplicably wealthy Guo, now a familiar sight in furs who’d somehow survived the RCSC disaster and even prospered, was now in prison orange and confessing to a growing litany of transgression: from gambling on World Cup games and online poker to fabricating gossip and accepting ludicrous sums for sex (“never less than 100,000 yuan ($17,400)”).

On air, and prior to any criminal trial, Guo also admitted having “seriously destroyed the reputation of the RCSC.” That might be routine work for a National Enquirer or Daily Mail columnist, but in China it’s illegal. That day’s late-night CCTV newscast dedicated nearly 20 minutes to the tale, after giving Ludian its due 10-minute lead. 

The details were unbeatable; the timing unconscionable.

The onslaught, coordinated by three major state outlets to deliver 144-character-sized revelations over several hours, appeared to have been so meticulously planned that stopping it would seem to demand a presidential order. In the end, it took a propagandist one.

Some were swift to acknowledge what transpired as a rare goof in the PR machine at a time of national tragedy. The majority seemed either non-swayed or merely dismayed: “No matter what the Red Cross says, I will never donate money to them,” one Weibo commentator said.  

Yet the apathy may have bled into a blunder involving a far more sensitive organization: the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

Catastrophic damage to lives and livelihoods can be irreparable after a quake. Traditionally in natural crises, the PLA has swung into action, as rescuer, unifier and public relations ambassador.

The mobilization in Yunnan this month evoked their hardscrabble response.

With roads and routes devastated by the quake, the closest troops responded almost immediately, converging on the scene by foot. Many infantry units marched for 22 hours straight. No one asked why an earthquake-prone mountainous region like Yunnan wasn’t battle-ready for helicopter search and rescue teams, food drops, airlifts and evacuations.

“Chinese media don't care so much about the victims,” says Zhao Chu, an independent Shanghai-based military commentator. “They pay a lot of attention to setting up promotable propaganda images. … Except they screwed it up this time.”

Acts of civic commemoration would be marginalized, even quashed. Organizers of one candlelit vigil, planned for Ludian’s central Bayi Square four days after the tragedy, were ordered to disperse or risk arrest. “The pressure on security maintenance is high,” one official was overheard explaining, according to a Jiangxi TV station. The country was in the midst of a “sensitive period.”

Official photos told a tale that could have been lifted from the fictional diaries of mythical recruit Lei Feng: Wholesome troops, hungry from the long march to the crisis zone, gratefully chowed instant noodles cooked in muddy local water — “since fresh water was rationed only to the injured.”

Displays of brick-bashing machismo have, until recently, been a staple of PLA showmanship. But it turns out that contemporary Chinese don’t think it’s particularly smart for their soldiers to eat mud.

China National Radio (CNR) and Global Times (GT) faced a barrage: Why did the country’s soldiers not have the necessary filtration equipment or provisions? What were their health risks? Where was the vast military budget being spent?

Sensing blood, the tabloid GT disavowed the report in a fresh article affecting outrage at the “harming of soldiers' spirits.” “They’ll always try to use water that is clean,” the paper quoted an unnamed army officer as saying.

For its part, CNR’s footage showed its own reporters had supped from the muddy meal. “It becomes a game for the government: either choose to admit it’s a fake story, or allow the public to dig deeper,” Zhao said.

Senior GT online editor Hao Junshi chose the former, apologizing on Weibo, albeit explaining that both stories were, in fact, partly fictional. The soldiers had eschewed their own fresh, filtered supply of water in order to show solidarity with quake victims, or so Hao suggested.

In times of crisis, the truth can end up like that water story: never simple, and rarely pure.