Chinese ask for quake compensation
A child looks over the fence in the Christchurch suburb of Avonside on March 3, 2011. It will take at least 10 years to rebuild Christchurch, officials have said, warning it would be months before they could even begin to reopen the quake-hit New Zealand city.
As Japan deals with fallout from its catastrophic earthquake and tsunami, a Chinese official has chosen this odd time to suggest that New Zealand pay Chinese parents who lost children in the Christchurch earthquake earlier this year.
The Associated Press reported on Monday that an official from the Chinese embassy in New Zealand has suggested New Zealand's government ought to consider China's one-child policy and potentially pay bereaved parents who lost "future breadwinners" in the quake that killed 166 people and left more missing. Among the confirmed dead were seven Chinese school children. Twenty more are missing.
"You can expect how lonely, how desperate they are…not only from losing loved ones, but losing almost entirely the major source of economic assistance after retirement," the official told New Zealand radio of Chinese parents.
New Zealand appears to have no plans for special compensation to Chinese families. China paid compensation to some parents of children who died in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, thousands of them crushed to death in schools believed to have been shoddily constructed because of vast corruption. Parents who tried to sue over the deaths of their children were arrested and harassed.
Every day, reporters and producers at The World are hard at work bringing you human-centered news from across the globe. But we can’t do it without you. We need your support to ensure we can continue this work for another year.
Make a gift today, and you’ll help us unlock a matching gift of $67,000!