China will study collapse of schools

In questioning the structural safety of schools, Wang and many other Chinese touched on thorny issues that have troubled Chinese leaders for years: the wide income gap between rural and urban centers; the competence and integrity of local officials; and a lack of funds for basic education in a country that has spent hundreds of billions on roads, bridges and other infrastructure.

Wang Zhenyao, Beijing's disaster relief director at the Ministry of Civil Affairs, said during a news conference last week that schools weren't the only buildings that collapsed. He said the Civil Affairs bureau offices in Beichuan County also came down in ruins.

"Government buildings are not all that solid," Wang said.

Countless houses, apartments and other properties were destroyed. But in some places, schools were the only buildings that tumbled.

In a northern rural district of Chongqing, about 200 miles from the epicenter, a four-story building collapsed at Center Elementary School, killing at least five students, according to local media accounts. Yet the apartments and houses behind the school were still standing.

The brick and concrete Center school building was constructed in the 1990s, later than the houses behind it, by a private contractor who apparently has gone into hiding, according to Chongqing Evening News.

By one self-reported assessment provided by the Ministry of Education, about 6.5% of the rural primary schools in 2006 were considered weifang -- dangerous houses -- about double the rate of urban schools.

The actual number of unsafe schools is much higher. Lianshan Complete Primary School in Shaanxi province isn't listed as a dangerous school. But its eight classrooms for 314 students and 20 teachers are in brick buildings with no concrete beams or pillars, said headmaster Chen Yudong.

Although the school is in a seismic zone, "the government's never come to inspect our facility about earthquake resistance," said Chen, who has been at the school since 1985.

Du Xiuli, dean of the College of Architecture and Civil Engineering at Beijing University of Technology, said that if schools in Sichuan province were built according to current code for that area, a magnitude 7.9 quake would have caused damage but shouldn't have led to their collapse.

He said some of the schools might have been built before the seismic code took effect, and construction quality at others might have been poor.