"Water in the Tangjiashan quake lake in Sichuan province was rising Monday despite the increased outflow through a channel.Increasing the outflow of water is critical for the dam'ssafety. If the water flows too slowly, the inflow will increase the pressure on the dam. But again, too voluminous an outflow can erode the diversion channel and cause the dam tocollapse. A moderate rainfall around 6:50 pm was followed by a 4.8 magnitude aftershock a minute later yesterday (June 8). The tremors that lasted 20 seconds caused massive landslides on the surrounding mountains."
Since the quake occurred, Prime Minister Wen, who has won high praise not only from the Chinese but also from international disaster relief experts for the way he has organised the disaster relief, has spent more time in the quake-hit areas than inBejing--occasionally returning to Beijing for a few hours now and then to attend to other work. His decision to fly back to Sichuan to preside over an emergency meeting at the time of the visit (June 4 to 7) of Shri Pranab Mukherjee, the Indian Foreign Minister, to Beijing, is, therefore, totally understandable. It will be incorrect to interpret his cancellation of the proposed courtesy call by Shri Mukherjee on him as meant to be a snub to him for his strong statements before leaving for China reiterating that Arunachal Pradesh is an integral part of India.
India has been sending relief material to Chengdu, the capital of the Sichuan province, by aircraft of the Indian Air Force (IAF). One of the aircraft reached Chengdu when Shri Mukherjee was in Beijing. He decided to fly to Chengdu, receive the material and personally hand it over to the Chinese authorities. This was a gesture not only to the Chinese people, but also to the Tibetans who live in large numbers in the quake-hit areas and have been affected by the quake. It is not known how many of the 70,000 people affected by the quake are Tibetans. The Tibetan-inhabited areas of Sichuan are claimed by the Dalai Lama as part of his so-called Greater Tibet, a claim strongly rejected by the Chinese. Before the quake, there were violent anti-Beijing incidents in the Tibetan-inhabited areas of Sichuan, but these have since stopped.
Sichuan has the largest concentration of Indian students---most of them studying medicine in the Sichuan University. They live mostly in Chengdu, which has not been affected by the quake.