China: Collapsing Schools and Issues of Shoddy Construction

This isn't good at all. During the recent earthquake in Sichuan province, schools collapsed like houses of cards, crushing and killing numerous children and young people.

But other buildings in the same area often did not fall in the same dreadful way. Are we looking at substandard, shoddy building materials and procedures for Chinese schools?

Here is a blurb:

But the number of student deaths seems likely to exceed 10,000, and possibly go much higher, a staggering figure that has become a simmering controversy in China as grieving parents say their children might have lived had the schools been better built.

The Chinese government has enjoyed broad public support for its handling of the earthquake . . . But as parents at different schools begin to speak out, the question of whether official negligence, and possibly corruption, contributed to the student deaths could turn public opinion. The government has launched an investigation, but censors, wary of the public mood, are trying to suppress the issue in state-run media and online.