China moves quickly to deal with quake

If China's leaders are able to successfully show that they can overcome this latest crisis, it will allow them bragging rights with the Olympics around the corner, said Adam Segal, a China expert at the Council on Foreign Relations.

"They will use this as a kind of symbol, a demonstration that they can mobilize and respond to tragedies and show a government that is competent and in control," he said.

China hasn't always responded well to crises. Tens of millions of people starved in the famine created by the disastrous Great Leap Forward of the 1950s. The 1976 quake in the city of Tangshan was the most devastating in modern history, killing at least 240,000 -although some other reports say as many as 655,000 perished.

As economic growth raised expectations for better government, the leadership has poured resources into disaster relief. Flood controls were put in place following the 1998 floods, when the rivers burst their banks, killing about 4,000.

China's ability to mobilize manpower and resources for relief efforts is due in part to its long history with natural disasters, from typhoons to annual floods that displace tens of thousands of people. Pressure for a rapid response was particularly intense this year, with the government already grappling with fallout from a string of crises, both natural and manmade.

Gu said Beijing's initial response to the quake was surprisingly quick.

"What strikes me the most is that the response is really, really fast," he said. "Responding to this disaster is particularly difficult, because it happened in a mountainous area with high population density."

Gu said he believes China's centralized government proved an advantage in such times because it can quickly summon manpower and resources.

"It's a sad thing, but fortunately it did not happen during the games," he said. "Should any natural disaster strike during the games, we would know how to cope."

Disaster experts say China's quick actions are even more impressive when compared with the lackluster response of its neighbor Myanmar to a deadly May 3 cyclone. The death toll following Cyclone Nargis is more than 30,000, with numbers expected to rise because of the government's unusually slow, and even counterproductive, actions.