Thirty years after it occurred, Chinese authorities have revealed for the first time that a massive earthquake killed nearly 16,000 people and devastated a large area of the southern province of Yunnan.
The earthquake, the second-worst in the 50 years of communist rule, occurred on January 5th, 1970, but the news was covered up at the time. The official Chinese news agency lied to the world about the magnitude of the earthquake, saying it was 7.0 on the Richter scale, rather than 7.7, and announced that there had been few casualties.
In fact 15,621 people were killed and 26,787 injured in a vast area covering 8,888 sq km centred near the town of Tonghai, according to the official Guangdong Evening News which broke the news this week after local people held a commemoration for the victims on Wednesday.
The story was covered up because it was a "special period of the Cultural Revolution", an official told the newspaper. In other words it was the time when China under Mao Zedong was in denial: nothing could be conveyed to the outside world if it might reflect badly on the Chinese government, even a natural disaster. Ten years earlier China had tried to hide a famine which killed more than 20 million people.
This meant that no badly-needed foreign aid was made available to the earthquake victims in Yunnan province. To add insult to injury, Beijing sent the people of Yunnan half a million copies of Chairman Mao's Little Red Book, half a million Mao badges and 143,500 letters of sympathy, rather than practical help.
"At the time the Chinese government adopted a closed-door policy to international relief and mainly advocated spiritual aid," said an official by way of explanation. Contacted yesterday, a spokesman at the earthquake office in Yuxi in Yunnan confirmed the extent of the earthquake casualties and that very little aid had been provided, although he added the People's Liberation Army had been sent to help.
China's most serious earthquake this century occurred on July 28th, 1976, in the northern city of Tangshan, killing 270,500 people, according to revised figures published four years ago.
The previous official tally of 242,000 people killed by the awesome tremor, which measured 7.8 on the Richter scale, had long been questioned by Western observers as too low.