The 7.9 magnitude earthquake that struck Sichuan province Monday, causing nearly 10 000 deaths, was only the latest in a series of catastrophes that included freak snowstorms and a Tibetan uprising.

The central government prides itself on its ability to quickly react, usually with deployments from China's massive military corps.

The ruling party's mandate in part rests on being able to deliver aid in emergencies.

But China's capacity to control disasters and how they play out in the media is being stretched this year.

Its leaders are grappling with the fallout from multiple problems in the information-hungry Internet age when they had expected to focus only on the Olympics Games.

"The Olympics are an important symbol of China's effort to ...

get on the same gauge with the rest of the world.

So they have attached a lot of importance to them," said Roger Des Forges, a China historian at University at Buffalo, SUNY.

"But for most Chinese people, they are secondary to the quality of life that they are trying to achieve.

So these questions of disasters are uppermost in people minds, watching how the government is going to deal with them," he said.

On Monday, China was quick to show its public response.

Just hours after the quake, Premier Wen Jiabao flew into Sichuan province to oversee the emergency relief effort.

Speaking from the town of Juyuan, where a school collapsed and buried some 900 students, Wen acknowledged on national TV that the task will be "especially challenging."

This year, China's run-in with disasters began just before February's Lunar New Year, when the worst winter storms in five decades hit the country's densely populated southern and central region.

They left scores dead, knocked out power across cities and stranded hundreds of thousands during the country's busiest travel period.

In March, huge anti-government riots erupted in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa, sparking sympathy protests in Tibetan areas across western China.

The violent protests were the biggest challenge to Chinese rule in the Himalayan region in nearly two decades.

The subsequent government crackdown brought sharp international criticism of Beijing's human rights record and its rule over Tibet.

Thousands of troops were deployed across a wide swath of the country to tamp down unrest and restore order.

But their massive presence continued to draw an unwelcome spotlight on China's harsh rule in Tibet.

The negative attention spilled over to the Olympic torch relay's round-the-world tour.

Meant to be a feel-good kick-off event, the relay turned into chaos as pro-Tibet protesters mounted demonstrations at stops including London, Paris and San Francisco.

The bad news kept coming.

In April came China's worst train accident in a decade, leaving 72 dead and more than 400 injured when a high-speed passenger train jumped its tracks and slammed into another in rural Shandong province.

Excessive speed was determined to be the cause, and five railway officials were promptly fired.

Only last week's feat by a mixed team of Tibetan and Han Chinese mountaineers in bringing the torch up Mount Everest gave China the positive publicity it craved, three months to the day before the start of the games.

China spared no expense on its Olympic debut, spending an estimated US$40 billion on improving infrastructure and building sports venues in the run-up to the games.

Its money was apparently well spent.

None of the Olympic venues, 31 in Beijing alone, was reportedly damaged.

Ultimately, the series of crises could prompt China to reassess its true priorities, said academic Des Forges.

"I think there may be some way in which these crises are reminding the government that, as important as the games are, there are perhaps more important issues that need to be addressed," he said.

Nampa-AP

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