Earthquake in China

The images out of China are heartbreaking. Whole villages essentially flattened by Monday's powerful earthquake in mountainous Sichuan province. Schools down. Hospitals down. Grieving families standing in the rain.

And now, news of dams at risk of bursting. Maybe 20,000 dead. Maybe many more.

Beijing has responded with a hundred thousand soldiers and a national call for help, for shovels, for courage.

America learned from Katrina that natural disasters tear open big windows on a nation.

This hour, On Point: the earthquake in China, and what it revealsGuests:

Peter Ford, Beijing Bureau Chief for the Christian Science Monitor, joining us from Chengdu, Sichuan Province.

James Areddy, Shanghai correspondent for The Wall Street Journal and a member of the team that won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting.

Sun Zhe, Professor at the Institute for International Studies and Director of the Center for US-China relations at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

Orville Schell, Director of the Asia Society Center on US-China Relations in New York, he is the author of nine books on China, including "Virtual Tibet: Searching for Shangri-La from the Himalayas to Hollywood."