China Puts on Show of Humanitarian Aid for Turkey Earthquake

Chinese state media on Tuesday was stuffed with articles about the humanitarian aid China is sending to Turkey and Syria in the wake of Monday’s devastating earthquakes, including about $6 million in emergency assistance, a rescue team with 82 members, and satellite surveillance of the affected region.

Victims of the earthquakes doubtless appreciate all the help they can get, but the efforts trumpeted by China’s state-run Global Times are a tiny fraction of what the United States and Europe will do for the victims.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and other American federal agencies are already on the case, and it is a safe bet they have far more than $6 million in the pipeline. Two teams from USAID landed in Turkey on Wednesday, each as large as the group sent by China, and the U.S. European Command (USEUCOM) is diverting personnel and equipment into the quake area.

The Global Times, of course, pointedly avoided mentioning U.S. efforts while praising international contributions and touting China’s own assistance in exhaustive detail, down to the last bureaucratic flourish:

Other rescue teams from China have gone to Turkey. A civilian rescue team named Ramunion from Hangzhou, consisting of eight members and a rescue dog, is expected to arrive in Turkey on Wednesday. 

The Global Times learned from the team on Tuesday that it has taken advanced equipment, such as radar life detector for buried victims, as well as other equipment for search and rescue. The team is the first Chinese civilian assistance team sent to Turkey, and they are expected to be operating in the most damaged area.

Wang Ke, director general of the Pinglan Public Welfare Fund, told the Global Times on Tuesday that after the disaster, the fund immediately contacted Turkish and Syrian governments through their embassies in China to send an application to participate in the rescue mission. 

Another Global Times article on Tuesday detailed the contributions of a Chinese satellite company:

After the 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck the city of Nurdagi of Gaziantep Province in southern Turkey on Monday, the Changsha-based Spacety Co Ltd immediately arranged the Chaohu-1 satellite to conduct emergency imaging of the earthquake zone, the Global Times reporters learned on Tuesday. The radar remote sensing images of the surrounding area of the epicenter were obtained at 11:05 am local time on Monday.

After the earthquake first jolted the area, at least 185 aftershocks have been recorded in the southeast of the country and surrounding areas. With the situation in the disaster zone unclear and aftershocks continuing, remote sensing satellites have become the main means of obtaining information on the earthquake, experts said. 

According to Spacety China, the Chaohu-1 satellite adopts a strip mode, with an imaging area covering about 8,878 square kilometers. Researchers from the company compared the images of the epicenter with previously published optical satellite images before the earthquake. A residential area about three kilometers from the epicenter was apparently damaged.

A third piece touted China’s 40 million yuan ($5.8 million) in emergency aid for Turkey, plus an unspecified amount for Syria, and an unspecified amount of “relief materials including tents, sleeping bags, and blankets” donated by Chinese citizens in Turkey.

This was topped off with an editorial in which the Global Times chided the rest of the world for obsessing over small matters, such as the origin of that nasty little coronavirus pandemic, instead of forming the “true solidarity necessary to deal with global issues.”

Those hosannas to international solidarity quickly soured into a laundry list of the Chinese Communist Party’s usual bellyaches about foreign policies that interfere with Beijing’s ambitions:

Many people have the same feeling that since entering the third decade of the 21st century, international relations seem to have fallen into the quagmire of accelerated regression. Whether it is populism and trade protectionism in the economic field, or zero-sum game and geopolitical conflicts in the international political field, they are all escalating and an inertia that is continuously deteriorating has even been formed. Against this background, it is even more valuable for countries around the world to jointly support Turkey and Syria to resist disasters; but this kind of unity should not only be short-lived in the face of a sudden global crisis. We hope it can continue to warm the world.

Needless to say, there isn’t much optimism on how long the current unity or harmony can last. Just a few days before the earthquake, some Western countries including the US, the UK, Germany and France temporarily closed their consulates in Istanbul or issued security warnings about Turkey citing “security concerns,” triggering fierce protests in Turkey, which can be called a “diplomatic earthquake.” The matter has not been resolved. It is conceivable that in the land where the earthquake occurred, disaster relief and post-disaster reconstruction may still encounter obstacles and resistance at the geopolitical level.

After castigating the United States for refusing to work with the brutal Syrian torture state that Beijing helped to keep in power, the Global Times applauded China for demonstrating how to achieve true and lasting unity by making a goofy science-fiction movie in which China leads the world in an ambitious project to strap giant rocket engines to the Earth’s derriere and blast it into deep space:

The Chinese sci-fi movie The Wandering Earth 2, which is currently being screened, shows that true unity and cooperation can be achieved when the entire human race is at a critical juncture of life and death and will be destroyed if humanity doesn’t unite. We hope that in the real world we will not wait until the last minute to be forced to make a choice, but will be one step ahead, and take the initiative as soon as possible. 

“Every time after a disaster, people sympathize with the victims from the bottom of their hearts, and sincerely hope to provide help as much as they can. It is a shining part of universal humanity,” the Global Times concluded, missing the equally important lesson that the world’s most toxic and selfish regimes must keep falling back on the unmatched humanitarian kindness of its free nations.