China faces weather chaos with stoicism

Emergency crews struggled yesterday to restore power to parts of southern China blacked out for a week by heavy snow as forecasters warned of no quick end to the worst winter weather in 50 years.

Mobilising the might of the state, China has deployed more than 300,000 troops and nearly 1.1 million militia and army reservists to get traffic moving and ensure power supplies, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

The freak weather, which has killed at least 60 people in parts of the country unused to heavy snow, could last another week, the Central Meteorological Station said.

In Chenzhou, a city of four million in the southern province of Hunan, which has been without electricity for eight days, shopkeepers huddled under blankets while cooks warmed their hands over their woks.

At least the snow had stopped falling by late yesterday afternoon.

"At night there is nothing you can do but just pile on extra blankets. If you have an electric heater you can't use it," said Hu Jun, 20, pacing up and down to keep warm as he charged his mobile phone at an outside stall.

About 5,000 workers have been mending frozen power lines leading to Chenzhou, with some soldiers firing submachine guns to shatter ice cloaking the cables, according to Xinhua. Premier Wen Jiabao arrived in Chenzhou by train yesterday to oversee relief efforts. Officials said earlier they hoped to partially restore electricity to the city by the end of the day.

"These are small problems for us Chinese people. We're not afraid of difficulties here," said a woman working in a convenience store, half-burned candles on the counter.

"Things are all pretty normal," said the woman, who gave only her family name, Liu.

But a taxi driver struck a different note.

"Ninety per cent of people are complaining and nobody thinks the Government has handled this well at all," the man, who would not give his name, said. There have been no reports of crowd trouble at railway stations that have been thronged with people trying to get home for the Lunar New Year holiday, the most important festival in the Chinese calendar. New Year's day falls on Thursday.

But prices of food are rising sharply because of the weather chaos.

With inflation already near an 11-year high, Wen told his Cabinet on Friday that officials had to "ensure economic and social stability" in the face of the disaster, Xinhua reported.