The stark contrasts between the responses to the Sichuan earthquake and to the Burmese cyclone have been widely discussed in the past few days.

In China a well-resourced regime deployed within hours thousands of personnel to lead the rescue effort.

Now wider Chinese society is responding to the Party's call by flooding to the scene with more materials and equipment.

Christian Aid's partner the Amity Foundation is on the scene to provide food and shelter for 8,000 families.

The China's leaders have been open as never before in their communications with their people and the world.

Meanwhile to the south Burma's secretive generals are mounting their own modest response to Cyclone Nargis.

They half-obstruct and half-tolerate the local relief efforts that began on 2 May.

These efforts have now scaled up to reach several hundred thousand people.

Community organisations that we have supported for years went into action in rescue boats on Day Zero and are now helping 200,000 survivors.

But two million lives are threatened by hunger and disease, while the junta inches the door open.

As we have said repeatedly in the last two weeks, a huge disaster like this demands an immense and immediate response.

In China that response has come mainly from the state and from society, with requests for some external assistance.

In Burma the regime needs to accept quickly that the bulk of the help should come from outside.

But there is another lesson in all this. Loss of life on the scale that we have seen in the past days can be reduced dramatically where conditions exist to allow people to take control of their own futures.

The delta area of Bangladesh was hit by a cyclone bigger than Nargis last November. About 3,000 souls perished then, certainly a tragedy, but not on the scale of Burma, or to compare with the 140,000 killed by Bangladesh's 1991 cyclone.

The difference was made by disaster preparedness. A more open society had permitted local organisations to enable communities to participate.

And Christian Aid, funded by the UK Government had trained volunteers, built shelters and supplied grassroots early-warning systems like bells, whistles, flags and bicycle-mounted loudspeakers.

As Cyclone Nargis powered up in the Bay of Bengal on May day, in Bangldesh thousands of volunteers urged the coastal populations to move to safety.

Down the coast in the Irrawaddy Delta farmers planting their rice crops had no warning of what was coming their way.