By Zhong Weizhi
Published: 2008-06-04

From comments, page 16, Issue 370 on June 2, 2008
Translated by Ren Yujie
Original article: [Chinese]

The Sichuan authorities have recently advised volunteers to restrain from flooding into earthquake-hit areas; instead, they should choose a more appropriate timing in the future to visit.

The authorities added that priorities on the ground presently were to treat the injured, resettle the displaced and help victims to recover peace of mind. 

They also have on several occasions in the past issued statement appealing for volunteers to avoid heading to quake zone blindly.

We hope that such advice was just a matter of readjustment to the pace of relief work, and not an intentional effort to shut out volunteers.

Now is a crucial period for the relief and reconstruction works in quake-hit areas, where urgent need for material supplies such as food, medicine and tents aside, human resources are also in great demand--for instance, medical and relief material management personnel.

We are of the opinion that the authorities should make it clear that volunteers with professional backgrounds and specific skills are still needed. Having the right volunteers can make a difference to the progress of relief works.   

Unfortunately, we have received feedback from the public in non-quake zones supporting such statements from the authorities.

In some online forums, negative comments on volunteers are numerous, such as "do not add unnecessary troubles to the quake areas", "stop competing for resources and food with quake victims", and "Sichuan is not short of people". As if the volunteers went to quake zones only to consume and exhaust relief materials.   

The misunderstanding may have resulted from insufficient news coverage on the work done by volunteers, and the superficial perception on what civil society is all about.

Indeed, the quality of some "volunteers" may be in doubt. Some less thoughtful individuals had in the spur of excitement, turned a relief journey into a self-driven tour. There were complaints that too many cars from volunteers had blocked the traffic and lifeline to deliver the much needed relief material to quake areas. There were also concerns that too many volunteers shuttling to and fro disaster zones could increase the risk for diseases to spread.

However, in reality, in many places and many instances, thousands of volunteers had risked their lives and conserved resources, just to deliver relief material, save quake victims, help to avert secondary disaster and maintain order in quake areas. They are the true volunteers, their sincerity should not be doubted, and their contributions should not be erased.

We believe we should view the scenario of the outpouring of volunteers positively. The immense disaster facing us has to some extend purged the materialistic mentality from our social fabric, replacing it with a sense of civic consciousness.

There is an unprecedented wave of awakening of community-based power and volunteerism. Presently, there exist a large number of people who are no longer satisfied with having charity organizations as the go-between channels to deliver their good deeds; who are no longer content with staying put in their respective posts, working hard and funding the rebuilding indirectly.

Instead, these people would rather cut the "middleman" segment, and get involved directly to help quake victims. They prefer to deliver money and relief material personally, and they want to rebuild the collapsed schools personally. These actions may seem to increase the cost of operations tremendously, but we need to ponder the reasons behind them.    

In a way, the actions reflected the public's distrust against existing charity organizations and institutions handling the donations. It meant there existed a gap between civil society and the agencies in power, though there have been cases of volunteer groups and NGOs seeking partnerships with the government.

This time, after the Sichuan earthquake, the Chinese government has encouraged various strata of society to join forces in relief and rebuilding. Though the government wishes to mobilize more social resources, there is a mismatch of an underdeveloped civil society.

In this disaster, we have clearly seen that community-based groups – including those that had been taken in by the government – remain weak due to various limitations in the system and their resources. Their stunted growth prevented them from making an impact; on the contrary, they appeared to be clumsy at times.

May this disaster bring about progress too; we hope in the process of rebuilding, government institutions and volunteer groups would improve understanding and build trust.

Hopefully the government would allow more room and resources for civil society to flourish, such as acquiring the public services of NGOs so that these organizations could enhance their professionalism and attain sustainable growth.

If the cooperation, bonds, trust, and mutual benefits between government and civil society could be fostered through this disaster, to some extent, it would be a blessing in disguise.