UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon visited the epicentre of China's huge earthquake yesterday, meeting victims and drawing an unspoken comparison with the sluggish aid efforts after a cyclone in neighbouring Myanmar.
He arrived by helicopter in the flattened remains of Yingxiu, a small town tucked in a steep river gorge which lost an estimated two-thirds of its inhabitants in the May 12 quake and has almost no safe buildings left standing.
Ban was met by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, who said the official death toll - currently 60,560 - could climb above 80,000, with nearly 30,000 people still missing.
Almost two weeks after the quake, the chance of finding anyone alive is tiny, although officials say they have not given up the search for survivors, especially a handful trapped in coal mines.
As relief workers in white coats and facemasks unloaded relief supplies and thousands of troops worked to clear rubble and bury the dead, Ban repeatedly paid tribute to the leadership of Wen and response of his government, and pledged full support.
"The Chinese government, at the early stage of this natural disaster, has invested strenuous effort and demonstrated extraordinary leadership," he told a small group of journalists.
Beijing has largely won praise for its relief efforts, sending over 100,000 troops and a string of senior leaders to the worst-hit areas and accepting some foreign help even though the quake zone is home to China's chief nuclear weapons research lab.
Easy media access to the worst-hit areas, and blanket domestic coverage, triggered a flood of donations from home and abroad, which hit 26 billion yuan ($3.75 billion) by yesterday.
The contrast with neighbouring Myanmar was unspoken but strong. After Ban's visit there earlier this week the government finally agreed to open up to all foreign aid workers, around three weeks after cyclone Nargis slammed into the country's delta.
In its aftermath the secretive Myanmar government appeared ill-equipped to help an estimated 2.4 million destitute survivors but it barred most foreign aid workers for weeks and pushed on with a long-planned constitutional referendum.
"I'm coming from my visit to Myanmar, where 130,000 people were killed or missing. It was very humbling and very tragic," Ban said. Media access to the area has been tightly controlled.
He had asked China to arrange a visit to quake-hit areas in part to send a signal about how to handle a natural disaster, said UN diplomats who declined to be named.
Speaking later on his plane back to Bangkok, Ban said there was "some difference" between the way that the Chinese and Myanmar governments had handled their crises.
Asked if his praise of Chinese leadership was intended as a message to Myanmar's rulers, he told Reuters: "You may have your own interpretation, I just wanted to talk about the facts."