Outside View

Sichuan could draw lessons from Taiwan

With Taiwan's celebrities and companies competing for the position of biggest donor after last month's devastating earthquake in Sichuan province, Taiwan could also pass its experience recovering from 1999 earthquake, The Financial Times reported.

"The Sichuan quake is almost like a copy of 9/21, only on a much larger scale," says Liao Wei-shih, a local official in Nantou, the county at the epicenter of the island's quake measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale on September 21, 1999. "Both quakes hit in remote mountainous areas heavily reliant on agriculture and tourism. Both created quake lakes."