In a system with a centuries-long tradition of austere leaders laying down the law from behind their palace walls, China's response to the worst natural disaster in 30 years revealed a nation in the throes of political change. The China that emerged from the wreckage of the 7.9 magnitude earthquake in Sichuan province looked surprisingly modern, flexible and if not democratic, at least open. It has admitted foreign rescue experts into the disaster area and tolerated reporting by a more aggressive media. The leadership has appeared more responsive to the public, and the public in turn, reacted with an outpouring of individual initiative to help out. Premier Wen Jiabao, sounding much like a Western politician throughout the week, trudged through the mud, visited gut-wrenching scenes of collapsed schools and homes, and stroked the cheeks of crying children. Wen even echoed the words of Bill Clinton, who spoke of feeling others' pain, as he told survivors, "Your pain is our pain.' President Hu Jintao flew to the battered city of Mianyang on Friday to show support for victims. The trip appeared to go beyond the formulaic photo opportunity. It suggested a growing recognition by the government that public opinion matters and that the people should know what their leaders are doing, particularly in times of crisis. Instead of ordering people, the government is guiding them in a manner befitting a global state in the 21st century. "The Communist government is changing its ruling ideology to become more people-oriented,' said Huang Nanping, Marxism and Leninism professor at Peking University. The Chinese people, too, have been initimately a part of the tragedy that has been brought into many of their homes through 24-hour television coverage. They've cheered collectively when children were rescued from under the rubble; more often they have cried when the victims were carried out dead. There has been a crush of people wanting to volunteer in the disaster area in Sichuan province -- so many that the government has worked to keep people away. Within 72 hours after the earthquake, Chinese individuals and companies had raised nearly $200 million. In almost every neighborhood of Beijing, volunteers were seen collecting money. The Beijing Municipal Health Bureau had announced that all of the city's blood banks were full. For centuries, China has operated under a top-down system. During the height of the Cultural Revolution, Mao ordered millions of city dwellers to the countryside and upended the society, leaving individual scars that remain three decades later. But since the 1990s, economic liberalisation and a changing culture have placed far greater emphasis on the individual, creating an ever-tougher balancing act for a one-party state attempting to maintain control and stability. Rising living standards and an increasingly willful middle class have shifted vitality and initiative to the private sector and the individual. Seeing disaster in their country, their every impulse is to head out to the scene with blankets, food, medicine and drinking water. Their enthusiasm might be more helpful to the country's cohesiveness than slogans about national unity and harmony. "It's wonderful to see young people working together like this. Nobody's ordering them to do it. It is all voluntary,' said a 73-year-old retired doctor, Xiang Guichen, who was strolling past the blood mobile. Also in evidence this week was a shift in the media. For decades, China's reaction whenever there was a hint of trouble was to cordon off the affected area and squelch alternative views. The government this time made a fleeting effort to control the media; an order went out Monday that Chinese outlets should not send reporters to the damaged areas and take only material from the official news service. But the order was ignored, causing the government to loosen its expectations. "This is such a big event that none us would give up the opportunity to cover it,' said a Chinese journalist, who asked not to be quoted by name. Foreign journalists also witnessed a difference in the treatment and access provided by government officials. "Journalists? Go right on through,' said a security official at a toll booth on the road to Mianyang, waving through a foreign journalist. The security official also did not collect the toll fee. At the county emergency relief center, government officials quickly provided statistics, handouts and interview opportunities. A government that has often put up with few challenges to its authority has taken the unusual step of fielding questions online from people about why thousands of schools that collapsed were not built to be quake-safe. Another change has been admitting foreign experts to the disaster area. China has had a huge incentive, and a big opportunity, to recover some of its losses in international prestige as it prepares to host the Olympics, which open in Beijing on August 8. The Tibet crackdown, its support for Sudan in the Darfur crisis, protests surrounding the Olympic torch relay, the domestic xenophobia whipped up in response to foreign criticism and human rights campaigns by overseas activists have damaged its international reputation. The destruction caused by natural disasters, for which the government bears limited responsibility, are far easier to address and respond to openly than political unrest, environmental devastation fueled by badly administered factories, corruption and other crises, which tend to see Beijing revert to its old ways. A government rooted in authoritarianism with the world's largest army may be in a better position to marshal relief resources and manpower than a decentralised democracy. "The Chinese government won a lot of credibility from the way they responded to the earthquake,' said Jing Jun, a sociologist at Tsinghua University. "But whether this is a turning point to China becoming a democratic society, that is a long shot.'