Society

China’s annual legislative meetings, which ended Monday with the traditional press conference by the premier, were generally short on surprises. They did, however, produce more than the usual serving of eyebrow-raising proposals and public utterances.

As in most authoritarian countries, important policy decisions in China are made by the political elite behind closed doors. But in a nod to democracy, delegates to the plenary sessions of China’s legislature, the National People’s Congress–and its advisory body, the China People’s Political Consultative Congress, which meets alongside the NPC–are allowed to propose laws and regulations, make policy recommendations and generally hold forth on pet topics to the nation’s press.

For many in China, these proposals and commentaries are the saving grace of the meetings–the single consolation prize for sitting through ten days of pro forma speechifying, soporific press events and endless newspaper editorials fawning over the latest Five Year Plan.

China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection hastened to declare over the weekend the country’s ambitious nuclear-energy expansion plans were unchanged by the worrying earthquake impact on Japanese power facilities. But that doesn’t mean that officials in China aren’t watching events in Japan with concern.

China Nuclear Plants in Shangdong.

Liu Tienan, a deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission, who is also the chief of China’s National Energy Bureau, paid a visit Sunday to a key nuclear-energy research bureau, and said Chinese authorities do have much to learn from Japan’s unfolding crisis even as they press ahead with nuclear energy use.

Mr. Liu’s visit by itself was a clear sign of Beijing’s concern about events in Japan, and how the technology failings there in the wake of last Friday’s earthquake might factor into China’s own plans.

Mr. Liu put the stress on the safety of nuclear power during his visit, according to a statement summarizing the visit posted Monday to the NDRC’s website. He “urged the authorities to seriously analyze and summarize lessons learned from Japan’s nuclear accident, to ensure the safe development of nuclear power industry in the spirit of being responsible for the Party and for the people,” the statement said.

Just hours after a massive 8.9 magnitude earthquake rocked Japan, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao called Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan to extend deep condolences to the Japanese government and people. And with that phone call came an offer for help to deal with the aftermath.

At this writing, the quake—said to be the worst in Japan’s history and the fifth most powerful in the world since 1900—and ensuing tsunami, has killed more than 10,000 people in the island nation, with thousands more missing. It has also caused serious problems at three nuclear plants in Japan, prompting the evacuation of 200,000 people. And Chinese rescue workers are now on the ground.

The Chinese search and rescue team, the first such mission ever accepted by Japan from China, arrived in Tokyo on Sunday and will join similar groups from dozens of countries in a search for survivors in the worst affected areas. Disaster response teams from the US, Britain, France, Switzerland, Italy, Germany and Israel also arrived in the country on Sunday. In total Japan has received offers of help from more than 50 countries as well as the UN who have sent a team to co-ordinate the international rescue operation, according to news reports.

China’s government, often at odds with Tokyo, offered support to Japan after Friday’s powerful earthquake, with Premier Wen Jiabao expressing “deep sympathy and solicitude to the Japanese government and the people” and telling his counterpart, Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan, that China is willing to offer whatever aid is necessary.

Chen Jianmin, director of the China Earthquake Administration, said its International Rescue Team has put its members, equipment, materials and medicines in place and ready to depart for Japan, after the 8.9-magnitude earthquake struck off the Japanese coast, triggering a major tsunami and leaving dozens dead and displaced tens of thousands of people. “We are highly concerned about the earthquake in Japan and its consequences such as fires and building damages,” the state-run Xinhua news agency quoted Mr. Chen as saying.

China is dealing with the aftermath of its own deadly earthquake, a 5.8-magnitude quake that struck its southwestern Yunnan province on Thursday, killing at least 25 people, injured 250, and destroyed some 18,000 houses.