Public anger over 7,000 destroyed classrooms

ANGRY Chinese yesterday demanded to know why so many schools collapsed during the Sichuan earthquake.

In a rare conversation with ordinary people on a government-run website, it emerged that nearly 7,000 classrooms were destroyed in the disaster.

Officials struggled to answer questions about why the figure was so high and promised to punish anyone responsible for shoddy construction. Education officials in provinces across China also started making promises to tear down and rebuild schools if they were not quake-safe to avoid another disaster.