Why Poorer Nepal Outperformed China After the Himalayan Disaster

So today I want to compare how two very different countries, two different political systems responded to the same Himalayan disaster. So first let's talk about who got there first. Let's start with the people because in a disaster the first rescue team is usually not the army, it's the people already there. Your neighbors, your relatives, the village next door. On the Nepal side, local communities began organizing almost immediately. Young men formed stretcher teams and clearing teams. People who knew the mountains helped search for the missing. Women set up makeshift kitchens and brought food and water. Local volunteers joined soldiers, police and rescue workers. They did not wait for everything to be centrally organized. They started helping. And you don't need an order from the capital to tell you which person needs help. You start digging. And that is what I mean by a society's ability to organize itself. During the first 24 to 48 hours, that can make an enormous difference. Now look at the Chinese side. Since birth, Chinese citizens have been told that they cannot organize themselves unless the government allows them to. Any rescue system is centralized. Government agencies take over. The military takes orders. The armed police takes orders. Local officials report everything upward and wait for instructions. Outside rescue teams and volunteers cannot come on their own. They need approval. Independent journalists face restrictions. Civilian groups cannot simply drive into a disaster area and begin operating. So in China, it may look orderly from the outside. At least that's what Beijing wants us to believe, that it's orderly. Everything is handled in an orderly manner. But it creates waiting. Waiting for instructions, waiting for approvals, waiting for equipment. During a disaster, waiting is costly. Because by the time a large rescue force arrives, the most important hours may already be gone. So the first difference was not really about resources or technology. It's about who was able to act. On the Nepal side, rescue began from the bottom up. On the Chinese side, it depended much more on instructions from the top. And they are completely different. This is because priorities for the two political systems are different. In Nepal, it's about saving human lives. In CCP China, it's about protecting the regime's image and reputation. Human lives come later. Nepal began publishing detailed rescue information almost immediately. On August 27, just one day after the disaster, Nepal released a nationality breakdown of the missing. And its Ministry of Foreign Affairs published a table showing 596 foreign nationals from 33 countries were still missing. And with country by country numbers, showing how many had been found, and how many remained accounted for. And as early as the 26th, the day of the disaster, Nepal's government-linked disaster database was already listing rescued people by name, age, gender, and location. And by the 28th, district authorities were adding missing person records with the names, home districts, municipalities, ward numbers, and in many cases, where the person had last been seen or worked. Those records were continuously updated as people were rescued, found, injured, or confirmed dead, or remained missing. Now China handled information very differently. Its official reports remained as total. The CCP released aggregate numbers. China's initial death toll was three, then it went up to five, then to seven. By the 29th, China said 16 people were dead and 546 were missing, including 261 foreign nationals. But China did not release a comparable nationality breakdown until August the 30th, four days after the disaster. And officials said the 261 missing foreigners came from 23 countries. There were 104 Nepalese, 49 Indians, 18 Americans, 15 British nationals, and others. As of today, China still had not published a comparable public database identifying all missing people individually by name, age, and status. Nepal released information person by person. China released mainly total numbers. And because of the lack of detailed information, Chinese families began turning to the internet for help locating missing relatives. Many of their posts were censored or deleted. Out of frustration, some people then tried to use Nepal's government disaster information website to search for information. But access from inside China was quickly blocked by Beijing. Chinese authority does not allow its citizens to access Nepalese government's website for information and update. So Chinese families are facing an extraordinary situation. Their government doesn't provide them with updates. Detailed information existed just across the border, but they could not freely access it from inside China. Now look at the rescue manpower. On August 27th, roughly one day after the disaster, Nepal's prime minister said 13,295 security personnel had already been deployed for search and rescue. By the 29th, that's still roughly within the first 72 hours, the number had risen to 15,431. And the details are 6,755 Nepalese army, 4,473 Nepalese police, and 4,203 armed police force personnel. On the Chinese side, it said that it had mobilized more than 2,100 rescue personnel overall. But by August 29th, roughly 72 hours after the disaster, China's CCTV reported that only about 70 firefighters were conducting search operations inside the core disaster area at Jirong Port. Much of the larger rescue force was still clearing roads, moving supplies, monitoring hazards, or trying to reach the site. And then look at the rescue results. Nepal had deployed close to 20,000 security personnel and had rescued, the latest I heard is nearly 10,000 people. On the Chinese side, roughly 2,000 rescue personnel had been mobilized and the authorities had publicly reported only two people were rescued alive. The two countries had vastly different resources, but the poorer country deployed far more people, released far more detailed information, and rescued far more survivors. Now you could argue that Nepal had a larger affected population, so naturally it needed a larger rescue operation. And that's true. But the Chinese disaster zone was not limited to Jirong Port. Satellite images show the affected area extended well beyond the border crossing. Satellite images show that the flood also backed up nearly more than five kilometers upstream along the Jirong-Zangbo River. And that puts places such as Labi Village close to or potentially inside the inundation zone. Other settlements, including the Chongse Village and areas around Sale Township were also part of the broader disaster region. And along that river corridor are smaller settlements, roadside buildings, and work sites that received almost no attention or no media attention. Think about how many videos we've seen from Nepal on social media in the past six days. We've seen, I mean, there were many sad videos, right? Destroyed villages, helicopter rescues, survivors, families searching for relatives, rescue workers digging through mud, a lot. Now think about the Chinese side. Other than the dramatic CCTV footage on the Jirong Port, which is now censored in China, and carefully selected official rescue footage, how much have we actually seen from the ground, inside China, from those villages and settlements, for example? Very little, almost none. But isn't that strange? So what happened in the villages near the Jirong Port? What happened in the smaller settlements along the river? How badly were they damaged? How many people were there? How many survived? We don't know. We haven't seen anything. Is that because the Chinese people didn't take any videos or send out any messages asking for help? I highly doubt it. I think the Chinese authorities have completely censored all information coming from Tibet. Now let's compare how information was handled. On the Nepal side, journalists were able to enter affected areas, interview survivors, photograph destroyed villages, speak with families searching for relatives, and report directly from rescue sites. Nepal also allowed survivors and families to speak publicly. That matters because the public was not dependent on one government account of what was happening. Government numbers could be compared with what journalists, families, hospitals, rescue workers, and humanitarian groups were seeing on the ground. You need everyone's input and help at this point. Now compare that with China. Chinese journalists were barred from entering the disaster zone and from interviewing affected families. Foreign journalists and independent investigators could not enter at all. On August 30th, while rescue operations in the disaster zone had still made little substantial progress, China's cyber police issued a high profile announcement saying they had imposed administrative penalties on 10 people from around the country for spreading rumors. So in a situation where authorities had not released a full list of the missing, and access to the disaster area was tightly controlled, and independent verification was extremely difficult, public concern and estimates about the scale of the disaster became grounds for punishment by CCP's cyber police. On August 31st, a video went viral in China. It came from Tibet Daily's official Weibo account. The video showed a group of firefighters lying fully closed beside the road. And the caption said, firefighters collapsed by the roadside at the rescue scene, resting only so they can fight again. But Chinese viewers immediately noticed something strange. If these firefighters had been fighting through a mudslide disaster zone for days, why were they so clean? Why their clothes look so clean? The picture on the left is taken from the Chinese propaganda video. And the picture on the right is actually from Nepal, from actual rescue workers. People were asking, why did they look so clean? I'm not talking about their jackets. Even the bottom of their shoes appears clean. The video's own voiceover said the firefighters had been carrying out continuous high intensity road clearing operations and were covered in mud before collapsing beside the highway to rest. Covered in mud? The pictures don't seem to match the description at all. Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world. Its military is small. China is the world's second largest economy. The economic gap between the two countries is enormous. Nepal's total GDP is only about one four hundreds of China's. It's not even 1% of China's. It's a quarter of 1%. Yeah, that's how small Nepal's GDP is. Its GDP per capita is about one ninth of China's. And yet when disaster struck, this poor small country showed remarkable resilience and efficiency. The contrast is striking. Many media outlets have noticed the contrast, but they didn't say why the contrast. It lies in their political systems. Here's my answer to this contrast. This is the most important part of my talk tonight. Nepal is small, but is a democracy with a multi-party parliamentary system. Its democracy is far from perfect. Governments change frequently. Corruption remains a problem, and press freedom is not absolute. China, on the other hand, is the world's second largest economy and the largest communist state. It is governed by one-party rule under a highly centralized political system with no press freedom. The state also plays a dominant role in the economy. I know there are many people in the and some even lost confidence in democracy. But the Himalayan disaster proves how a poor democratic country with so little managed to do some of these things much better than a powerful communist state with almost everything. When the same catastrophe struck two very different political systems, the poorer democratic country with fewer resources, fewer helicopters, and a much smaller military still showed that ordinary people, local communities, journalists, and institutions could act with a degree of freedom and flexibility that mattered when human lives were on the line. While the CCP's so-called institutional advantage, a.k.a. its centralized system, completely failed.