The following is an article from the Associated Press. My thoughts at the end.

QUOTE:
By Christopher Bodeen, The Associated Press

WUFU, China - After their daughter was born, Bi Kaiwei and his wife, Meilin, decided to adhere to China's one-child policy and its slogan, "Have fewer kids, live better lives."

For them and other couples who lost an only child in this week's massive earthquake, the tragedy has been doubly cruel. Robbed of their sole progeny and a hope for the future, they find it even harder to restart their shattered lives, haunted by added guilt, regret and gnawing loss.

"She died before becoming even a young adult," said Bi, an intense, wiry chemical plant worker, standing beside the grave of 13-year-old Yuexing - one of dozens sprinkled amid fields of ripened spring wheat and newly planted rice. "She never really knew what life was like."

Yuexing, a bright sixth-grader, was in school when Monday's quake struck, bringing the Fuxin No. 2 Primary School crashing down, killing her and 200 other students. Teachers had locked all but one of the school's doors during break time, parents said, leaving only a single door to escape through.

Many among the more than 22,000 people killed were students in school. Nearly 6,900 classrooms collapsed, government officials said Friday, in an admission that highlighted a chronically underfunded education system especially in small towns and compounded the anger of many Chinese over the quake.

In Wufu, a farming village two hours north of the Sichuan provincial capital of Chengdu, most of the dead students were a couple's only child - born under a policy launched in the late 1970s to limit many families to one offspring. The policy was meant to rein in China's exploding population and ensure better education and health care.

The "one-child policy" has been contentious inside China as well as out. The government says it has prevented an additional 400 million births. But critics say it has also led to forced abortions, sterilizations and a dangerously imbalanced sex ratio as local authorities pursue sometimes severe birth quotas set by Beijing and families abort girls out of a traditional preference for male heirs. The policy is law but there are exceptions.

Farther down the lane from where Yuexing is buried, 10 more graves were laid out, some accompanied by favourite items - textbooks for English and music, a pencil box, a Chinese chess set. At one, a grandmother threw herself to the dirt and wailed as her husband lit a handful of "spirit paper" believed to comfort the dead in the afterlife.

Another bereaved parent, Sang Jun, stood where his daughter, Rui, is buried, a simple mound of dirt beside his quake-shattered farmhouse. The house is surrounded by burned bushes - a traditional disinfectant.

"The house is gone and the child is dead," said Sang, who wore a T-shirt and plastic sandals. His parents, both in their 70s, looked on with tears in their eyes.

Resistance by ordinary Chinese has forced Beijing to relax the policies, allowing many rural families to have a second child if the first was a girl. But in Wufu, the family planning committee seems to have prevailed on most families to stop at one child. Slogans daubed on boundary walls and houses all along the rutted country road leading to Wufu call on families to "stabilize family planning and create a brighter future."

Standing in the rubble of the school holding his daughter's ID and a posed shot taken at a local salon, Bi - pronounced "Bee" - said starting a new family, either by having another child or adoption, is simply imponderable.

"I'm 37 years old and my child was 13. If we were to do it again, I'd be 50 when this stage comes along," Bi said.

Parents who lose children in disasters often feel intense guilt for what they see as a failure to protect them, said psychology professor Shi Zhanbiao. Parents, he said, may also recall their past relationships with their children with regret, thinking they were too stern, did not show them sufficient love or did not interact with them enough.

"They'll think that if they just hadn't sent their children to school that day, they would have been saved," said Shi, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Science in Beijing.

The loss is intensified for those with no other offspring to lavish with care and affection, Shi said. And in China, other, more practical concerns may also come into play because children are generally expected to care for their aging parents.

"They'll be worried about the future, because for the later part of their lives, they'll have no one to depend on," Shi said.

Bi said Yuexing was polite and smart. She had won a coveted place at the county's best high school on the recommendation of a teacher. She was a top student who got better after the family moved closer to school to reduce her commuting time, said Bi, who completed high school but failed the national university entrance exam.

In her pictures, Yuexing, whose name combined the Chinese characters for moon and star, is smiling and demure. The studio shot shows her wearing a bright yellow sweater and looking playfully over her shoulder.

Parents in Wufu said they plan to bring a formal complaint over what they say was corruption and malfeasance in construction of the school. They say officials moved the students from a group of one-storey classrooms - all of which survived the quake - into a modern-looking, but unsafe building.

"We have nothing else, no other wish but to win justice for our children," said Sang's wife, Zhao Jing. "We put all our hopes on these kids, and this is the return we get."

It's definitely a sad article - but mostly in its reporting. Don't get me wrong, the tragedy is sad, as it is for the 20,000+ people who have thus far been reported dead in the NATURAL disaster that hit Sichuan last Monday. But natural disasters don't sell papers - gov't corruption, bad policy, and anything else there is to blame does.

If the parents had had two kids, would the loss of their daughter have been a trivial matter? If I died, but my sister lived (as we were born in the open and free society were we're allowed to have as many children as we want) would that make it easier for my mother to accept? It's a stupid argument and a somewhat reckless angle to take for an AP article.

Of course parents with dead children are going to look for answers and look for a place to focus their sorrow and anger over their loss, but for an AP journalist to wrap a story of tragedy into a criticism of an (at worse) questionable government policy to control the birth rate in an over-populated country is just stupid.

Couple that with looking to fault shoddy building codes while people are still being dug out, it's frustrating to read and makes me wonder if there are any reporters reporting on China that actually have a balanced in-country view, or if they're all just shipped here to report guesses and opinions.

It's a bit weird being on this side of things, as the Western media has been slaughtered lately in its hugely biased portrayal of China. Sadly it just galvanizes blind nationalism here, which is good for no one.

Thoughts?

Your point is well taken, why don't you direct your response to the reporter via the American Press, just a thought

I had a conversation about this with my wife last week. After reading the news about a dozen or so parents marching to the local Communist building while one of the Communist reps begged on his knees for the parents to not go, it got me thinking.

It is a very sad tragedy to lose a child and I would never want to go through that. I know there is talk about why schools collapsed while other buildings did not. With that in mind, when an earthquake hits and it's as strong as the one that hit Sichuan, there's not a lot one can do but find the safest place. Schools weren't the only buildings that collapsed and children were not the only ones that died. Is the government completely at blame for the loss of all these lives? When tragedy hits, it's impulsive to blame someone. Usually when there's no one else to blame, people blame themselves. These small towns that were hit by the earthquake were just that, small towns. Dujiangyan was probably the only one that is frequented with a lot of tourists and has more money. I didn't notice any downtown coverage there. So that means most of the damage was on the outskirts where the villagers live. Poorer people, poorer buildings. The government will do more, but it's impossible to be prepared for something that big. I'm not saying that the poor have to suffer like that, I'm saying that the poor had nothing twenty years ago and now at least they have schools. What's worse? No education or education in a piss-poor building? Who would have thought that an earthquake would have torn through these towns? People accept what they can to get the best of life. Again, this tragedy has made me teary-eyed. But, everyone must move on. It's pointless to blame people at this stage. The government has swiftly moved in to provide support and help. What else could have been done? Perhaps more. But the point is, it happened.

Now there are ones blaming the one-child policy. Earthquake aside, it is the government's job to protect it's culture. Chinese must breed. The name must be carried on. The government tries its best to protect it's culture and provide for a billion plus people. Is it insane to think that any organization can provide perfectly for so many people? I think it is. I think the Communists have done a pretty good job. If a husband and wife make one hundred Yuan a month, they'll still have a child. Can you blame the government for not being able to fully take care of such people? I think it's impossible. So, some things are done rather cheaply to provide what they can for people. If anyone here has driven around Sichuan you'd be able to see track housing established by the government for low-cost living. If a disaster were to hit these places, they'd go up like a trailer park in America. Which, it must be added, is a long running joke in America. But, people still buy these kinds of homes because it's better to take a chance with what you can get than to have nothing at all. I agree with this mindset. It's called living. It's what we as people do. We make do with what we have.

So, after my long winded approach to tackling this sensitive subject, it all comes down to this: We do what we have to do to survive. It's most apparent in countries like China. When tragedy hits, it's sad to see the loss of lives but it's impossible (usually) to blame any one organization.

The one-child policy and poor construction can seem like an easy scapegoat, but during these times, nothing is easy and really people just have to carry on.

And, on a final note, regardless of what the government's motives are, China and her people have spent more time focused on the victims than I've ever seen displayed before in other countries, like America... Katrina...9/11...

I'm rambling... Perhaps I have contradicted myself or come across badly. I really do feel sorry for loss of all those lives.