More than 1,000 people took part in commemoration activities
Friday morning in Tangshan, northern Hebei Province, to mark the 30th anniversary
of the terrible earthquake which killed more than 240,000 people
there.
At 8:30?AM Friday,?people from all walks of life
headed by Bai Keming, secretary of the Hebei Provincial Committee
of the Communist Party of China (CPC), gathered at a square in
downtown Tangshan to lay flowers at the monument to citizens and
rescuers who died in the tragedy.
"Thirty years on, we will never forget the victims of the
tragedy, but we must carry on with courage, confidence and hope,"
said Bai.
Zhang He, secretary of the CPC Tangshan City Committee, said
that citizens have gradually stepped out of the shadow of the quake
and a new Tangshan with a robust economy, a stable society and
happy citizens has been born from the ruins and debris.
More than seven million people live in the 13,472
square-kilometers Tangshan municipal area, including an urban
population of?3 million, according to the official website of
the Tangshan city government.
In the past year, Tangshan's gross domestic product grew by 15.1
percent to reach 202.7 billion yuan (US$25.3 billion), taking it to
first place in Hebei Province.
The 2005 per capita disposable income for urban residents was
10,488 yuan (US$1,311) and 4,582 yuan (US$572.8) for rural
residents.
Bai said that world seismological history shows that it often
takes several decades or even a hundred years to reconstruct a city
after a major earthquake.
It took San Francisco 30 years to recover from the 1906
earthquake while Japan spent 20 years rebuilding after the 1923
Kanto quake.
Yet Tangshan completed its resurrection in only?10 years
and developed rapidly over the following two decades. "It's nothing
short of a miracle," said the official.
"However, without support from people across the country and
from central government and without the selfless devotion of the
People's Liberation Army, Tangshan would not be where it is today,"
said Bai.
Though the disaster took more than 240,000 lives, its positive
legacy is the "Tangshan Spirit", characterized by teamwork,
toughness and persistence.
He said the Chinese government was keen to commemorate the day
and remind the nation of this dramatic piece of history.
An earthquake measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale razed Tangshan,
200 kilometers east of Beijing, early in the morning of July 28,
1976, leaving 242,769 people dead and 164,851 critically
injured.
The death toll was kept secret for three years and was revealed
in 1979 by Xinhua reporter Xu Xuejiang.
(Xinhua News Agency July 29, 2006)