Rescue and recovery

One of the Sichuan disaster's most lasting legacies lies in its recovery model, say analysts.

As the direct economic cost of the earthquake was almost 980 billion yuan ($140 billion), far beyond Sichuan's economic capacity, the State Council twinned each severely affected county with one of 19 provinces or municipalities, which are required to donate at least 1 percent of their annual fiscal revenue towards reconstruction projects until next year.

Top: He Xiantong and his new wife in Qingchuan. Below: He Xiantong sells chrysanthemum beside his collapsed house, where his first wife died.

That model has been recently replicated for the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.

Relief for previous serious disasters primarily took the form of direct fiscal transfers from the central government. Developed regions, on the other hand, have been using their fiscal revenue to provide financial support to recipient regions for more than three decades.

"An older partner assistance program had been running in Xinjiang since 1996," said Jurat Imin, deputy Party chief of the region's Hotan prefecture, which will be partnered with Anhui province, and Beijing and Tianjin municipalities. "However, this latest scenario has for the first time clearly quantified the targets for the supporting provinces and municipalities.

"In the past, there was no target of how much money they had to invest, so it was impossible to really measure how much effort they put into the program," he said. "Allocating aid to county-level administrations could help the (twinned provinces and municipalities) to better target the problems that constrain the development of the regions involved, so that the aid could be concentrated on the right spot. That's an experience gained from the Sichuan earthquake."