SHANGHAI—A flood of tents, blankets and other relief supplies began pouring in for the homeless and hungry survivors of last week's devastating earthquake that hit a mountainous and remote part of the Tibetan plateau in western China, as Chinese President Hu Jintao flew in to tour the region.
Mr. Hu, who cut short a trip to Latin America, on Sunday visited injured people being treated in a stadium and spoke with schoolchildren in Qinghai province's Yushu prefecture, where most people are Tibetan. "There will be new schools. There will be new homes," Mr. Hu wrote on a blackboard in a makeshift classroom.
More than 1,700 people have been confirmed dead and another 256 are listed as missing after Wednesday's temblor, authorities said Sunday. The quake struck one of the country's most troubled ethnic-minority regions. Yushu was the scene of demonstrations in 2008, when antigovernment unrest rocked China's Tibetan areas.
China's top leaders have played a prominent role in the government's response to the quake. Premier Wen Jiabao also traveled to quake-hit areas on a tour that was well-publicized in China's state media. Mr. Wen called for national unity in the wake of the disaster, saying Tibetans and the country's majority Han Chinese are "all from one family."
Still, the Communist Party's Central Committee issued instructions Sunday for police in Yushu to step up patrols in an effort to "maintain social stability and unity among different ethnic groups," the official Xinhua news agency reported.
Many Tibetans chafe at government restrictions on their religious practices and civil rights and complain that they have been left behind as the Chinese economy has boomed. After the at-times-violent protests in 2008, the government blanketed Tibetan areas with troops and armed police and detained large numbers of people.
Tibetan Buddhists' exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, said Saturday that he would like to travel to Yushu to offer "comfort" to quake survivors. Beijing hasn't commented publicly on the Dalai Lama's statement, but is unlikely to allow him to visit. China has blamed the Dalai Lama, who fled China in 1959, for instigating the 2008 unrest.
Since the quake—which Chinese seismologists said was magnitude 7.1 and the U.S. Geological Survey measured as magnitude 6.9—authorities have struggled to move men and supplies to Yushu, a 12-hour drive from the provincial capital, Xining. By Sunday, officials said, 25,000 tents, 52,000 quilts and 850 tons of food and water had been delivered.
More than 100,000 people were forced from their homes by the quake, which officials estimated had destroyed 85% of the houses in the town of Jiegu, Yushu's main population center. Nighttime temperatures in the region are below freezing and many people were forced to huddle together for warmth under makeshift shelters of plastic sheets and blankets.
Guoyang Zhaxi, an ethnic Tibetan Jiegu resident and volunteer helping distribute relief goods Sunday, said "people's moods are stabilizing" as supplies flow in and morale has improved after the visits by President Hu and Premier Wen. He said the relief efforts are "a chance for the central government and Communist Party to change relations between themselves and Tibetans."
He said the outpouring of support from Han Chinese in the wake of the disaster "will touch Tibetan peoples' hearts." He said Yushu's location in the center of the country's Tibetan areas gives public attitudes there special influence. "Changing attitudes among people in Yushu will drive an attitude change in all Tibetan areas."
More than 10,000 soldiers, police and firefighters continued to dig through the wreckage of collapsed buildings on Sunday, searching for survivors. Sunday morning, rescuers pulled a 68-year-old man from the rubble in Jiegu, where he had been trapped for 100 hours. But hopes for finding other survivors were dimming.
"We will make all-out efforts to build a new Yushu," Mr. Wen, a member of China's majority Han ethnic group, promised residents Friday, according to state media. "Whether you are Tibetan or Han, we are all from one family and we need to take care of each other."
During an unusually long visit to the scene of the earthquake, where he arrived Thursday evening, Mr. Wen went to the site of a collapsed vocational school, visited injured people in tents behind a local hospital and oversaw an emergency-worker meeting. On Friday, he talked with orphaned children and visited a Tibetan Buddhist monastery.
"Your suffering is our suffering," Mr. Wen told townspeople in Jiegu, where most residents are Tibetan.
Relief efforts after the 2008 Sichuan earthquake generated significant public support for the government. The tragedy, in which more than 80,000 people died or went missing, also became a patriotic rallying point for Chinese and prompted a nationwide outpouring of donations and other assistance.
On Friday, People's Daily, the mouthpiece of the Communist Party, called on Chinese to "save lives and treat the wounded at any cost" after this latest quake. People offered online sympathies to the victims. One wrote: "Condolences to the victims who are our ethnic-minority compatriots."
