China's massive postquake tasks

Nearly 300 students died when Juyuan Middle School collapsed, making it a center of bereaved parents' anger. "Local officials ... gave us 10,000 RMB ($1,430) per child, but I cannot accept this," says Mrs. Song, who lost a child when the building fell. "I am over 40 years old, I cannot handle this blow. I don't know what to do next."

In a retreat from the unusual official openness that marked the first two weeks after the earthquake, when local and foreign reporters were allowed to go anywhere they pleased, police have begun turning foreign journalists back from towns where schools collapsed, often on apparently spurious safety grounds.

Police have also made it harder for independent nongovernmental organizations to deliver aid to quake victims in a number of places.

The official mood, to judge by the state-run press and a ceremony held last week at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing to honor heroes of the relief and rescue operation, is one of self-congratulation.

This has raised doubts about initial impressions that the flood of volunteers who rushed to the quake zone to help, independently of the government or ruling Communist Party, might represent civil society asserting itself.

"The party does not see any need to adjust or reevaluate its role" says Russell Leigh Moses, a political analyst here. "It simply takes credit for everything that is going on."

At the same time, however, "even though the state still directs the process," argues Dali Yang, head of the East Asia Institute at the University of Singapore, the volunteer spirit and the Internet debates over the government's role indicates "a much more self-aware and reflective population that bodes well for continuing action."

The government's new nervousness about free press reporting and independent citizen action "may be a step backwards, but there were two steps forward" says one European diplomat. "This is progress. The envelope has been pushed."

On the ground, urban residents seem resigned to a life in tents and prefabricated housing for the foreseeable future. Longer-term permanent solutions to their problems "could take five years, or longer" says Professor Peng.

Farmers, however, are anxious to return to their fields that need harvesting, and many are frustrated at local officials' insistence that they should group together in temporary government-built settlements. "Most of them want to go back to the places they used to live" as soon as possible, says Ma Wanli, a relief volunteer focusing on the problems villagers are facing. "The problem is that government policy is unclear."

In Mianzhu, for example, Mr. Ma says, the local government has offered farmers 200 RMB ($114) per family member to help them build temporary houses near their fields if they insist on going home. But that subsidy would pay for only 36 sq. ft. a person, too little to live in.

And there is another problem, Ma explains. "The price of bricks has gone up 25 percent in the last week, and it is still rising. We just cannot tell how much construction is going to cost."

• Zhang Yajun contributed reporting.

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