it's more to do with the whole system rather than several officials being incompetent or corrupt.

for example, beichuan is a dangerous area as pointed out as early as in late 70's, people shouldn't have lived and worked there. it's that simple.

about 7000 schools collapsed, it reflects more of a problem of construction criteria for school rather than a few bad officials or constructors.

earthquake education on civillians in china is really poor, we must learn from japan on this.

in a sense, the government failed people's expectations ( here not talking about the rescue, which is laudable). if this happened in western countries, victims have valid reasons to sue the authorities.

for better results of reconstruction project, let's give those officials a "parole", give them a chance to redeem themselves. otherwise they just worry about punishments and think only cover-ups. it won't do much good to survivors, reflections, reviews, future prevention of those disasters.

unless find some really really corrut ones who deliberately, maliciously ignore safety issues for personal benefits, then maybe we can kill a chicken and show to monkeys.

how to placate victims' griefs, how about hu jt or wen jb apologize to them publicly? we chinese always hold those gestures important. and as i said above in a sense, as heads of china officials, hu and wen should hold them repsonsible for the tragedy.

past is past, priority is attention to survivors and how to never never let this "human-made" tragedy happen again