So who’s heard about the 2008 Chinese Winter Storms Disaster?

Comments Off

I have a lot of contempt for the American news media, but sometimes that spills over into actual hatred.

Starting on 1/10/08 there were a series of brutal winter storms in southern China.

Here’s a picture of a soldier using a flamethrower to melt ice off of frozen power lines in Yunnan province, which is at about the same latitude as Florida:

The impact:

63 deaths as a direct result of the weather
Over 200,000 sick and injured
223,000 homes have been destroyed
An additional 862,000 homes are damaged
The city of Chenzhou, with a population of 4.6 million (for reference, Los Angeles has a population of 3.8 million) was without power or water for a week
In total, 1.8 million people have been evacuated/relocated
1.3 million head of livestock have been killed
6 million railway passengers total have been stranded during the busiest travel season of the year (chinese new year)
4 million hectares (40,000 square km or almost 10 million acres) of food crops destroyed
54 billion RMB (7.5 billion US) in economic damage

So, who’s heard more than a passing reference to this? Where’s the reporting?

Natalee Holloway gets drunk and goes missing, and we have weeks of nonstop coverage. Humanitarian disaster in China? nobody cares. No Americans died (unlike, say, the 2004 Tsunami) so whatever.

Edit: Here’s a pretty good article from CNN. Too bad it’s not even on the front page of CNN World.

FREE Video Training For Internet Marketers

Get insider tips on how to make more money from your internet marketing efforts as well as how to bring thousands of new visitors to your website. Here’s what you get:

Ultimate Entrepreneur eCourse
The Online Profit Training
SEO Traffic Building Coaching Call (pre-recorded)
Blogging for Newbies eCourse
Internet Marketing News Center

We respect your privacy. Your information will not be shared with any third party and you can unsubscribe at any time

About author:

All entries by John Liu

Free Internet Marketing Magazines
We all have our favorite online marketing blogs, but here are a bunch of free emarketing publications I recommend subscribing to also. The sign-up
The Mass Media Sucks
This was just brought to my attention -
From the New York Times (emphasis mine):
Two election workers were convicted of rigging a recount of the 2004
Netflix Watch Instantly = Cable Killer?
Rave. For a certain segment of the in-home entertainment market, myself included, Netflix is reaching cable killer status. I’ve had a growing dissatisfaction with