First, I want to express my regret on the people in New Orleans.
And I brought some pictures for you. Before you judge Chinese government, just take a look at those pictures taken in flood area of China several years ago.
http://www.worldol.org/pictures/

Didn't the chinese just have to evac a quarter of a million people from a typhoon? Only about 5-7 deaths involved?

Correct me if I am wrong.

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I was banned from godlike productions... and loved it.

No amount of PR photos is going to convince me that not allowing the Chinese masses a voice in their own government is a good thing. Sorry.

No amount of humanitarian work by the PRC government will make them less oppressive.

Even if the Chinese government could more efficiently handle a crisis (which I'm still not sure it can), that is not the trouble we have with the PRC. Regardless of efficiency, none of us in the west would like to live in a country that offers no individual freedom or ability of the people to shape a political system. Especially sacred in America, at least to those of us that aren't conservative Christians, is the allowance to disagree loudly with the masses and the government and the US government's protection of those rights against the will of psychotic masses. The picture I get of China is still Tieneman Square. At least my government has not decided to run me over with a tank for disagreeing with it and has even been kind enough to keep the masses from killing me for that reason.
Now, maybe somewhat optimistically, I do see that you are going through some progress in China and I hope that as the resources build there your government extends freedom to your people or that your people take it from them (hopefully in a peaceful manner, but that would be even further down the road) and I hope you live to see it. But in the meantime, even though most of the people in my country stress me out, I still prefer the US government to any Communist government. Who knows how things'll look a hundred years from now when we're dead?