A tale of two regimes

China's response to a devastating earthquake should make the Myanmar government ashamed of its own lackadaisical response to a lethal cyclone.

It won't, but China's rulers know something the secretive Myanmar military junta does not: The people will forgive much in a government that, whatever its other failings, is there for them in times of disaster.

On Monday, a devastating earthquake, the worst since 1976, struck central China. Early estimates are that 10,000 are dead. The quake struck a little after 2 p.m., when the schools were still in session. Sadly, many of the dead are school children, including perhaps 1,000 students and teachers in one school alone.

Communications were down, power was out and the roads were filled with debris, but Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao arrived almost immediately. From Beijing, President Hu Jintao promised an "all-out" effort. Also immediately the government dispatched 50,000 troops and police to the region as rescue workers, including one unit that hiked all night to reach a wrecked city.

A lethal cyclone swept across Myanmar on May 3. The official death toll is 32,000, but is almost certainly much higher than that. The Myanmar government has remained silent in its remote capital. The Myanmar military seems clearly not up to the immense relief effort needed, but the junta has put all kind of obstacles in the way of foreign relief workers. As of Monday, only 34 visas for U.N. relief specialists had been issued and the U.N. secretary-general could not even get the junta's top general on the phone. He was reduced to sending a letter.

The head of the U.S. Pacific Command flew to Myanmar on Monday to offer help, including 4,000 Marines and a fleet of C-130s and heavy-lift helicopters, and flew back to Thailand the same day, still waiting permission to begin shipping supplies in bulk.

Through Monday, only token amounts of aid had reached the country, even as local food stocks were depleted and the threat of epidemic disease mounted.

The Myanmar people have suffered much under 36 years of on-and-off military rule. They can be forgiven if the junta's callousness and indifference to an epic tragedy finally exhaust their patience. This regime should go.

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)