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On March 1982 the president's standing with the population did take a big hit after a massive 7.9 magnitude earthquake devastated the city of Kaiping, killing some seventy thousand people and injuring another eighty thousand. Emergency services in Kaiping collapsed under the strain of so many casualties and help from the central government was sluggish at best. Yang Qiu's words on national television that: 'Everything is under control, there are shortages of aid anywhere, we will efficiently take care of this small quake'. The president's words seemingly minimizing the scale of the tragedy and the gripping images coming from Kaiping of corpses buried under the rubble coupled with the shocking ineffectiveness of the government's response(Yang Qiu cycled through three different ministers of national emergencies during the crisis) was a big blow to the people's trust in the party. Althought Qiu tried to walk back his comments and declared a day of national mourning, the damage was done. Victim's associations would in time morph into groups campaigning for political change at the top, one of these was formed by a political unknown named [[Linge Chen]] who would  unseat the party only ten years later. The [[1982 Kaiping earthquake]] was thus a watershed moment in [[Daxia]]n history, from then on the NRF would have to resort to outright electoral fraud and heavy handed repression to maintain its grip on power, and even this would prove to be not enough by the early 90's. The era of NRF rule after the earthquake is named by historians as '''the Slow Death''', a period of inertia and decay as the economy slowed down dramatically and social unrest at the party's misrule grew exponentially.
On March 1982 the president's standing with the population did take a big hit after a massive 7.9 magnitude earthquake devastated the city of Kaiping, killing some seventy thousand people and injuring another eighty thousand. Emergency services in Kaiping collapsed under the strain of so many casualties and help from the central government was sluggish at best. Yang Qiu's words on national television that: 'Everything is under control, there are shortages of aid anywhere, we will efficiently take care of this small quake'. The president's words seemingly minimizing the scale of the tragedy and the gripping images coming from Kaiping of corpses buried under the rubble coupled with the shocking ineffectiveness of the government's response(Yang Qiu cycled through three different ministers of national emergencies during the crisis) was a big blow to the people's trust in the party. Althought Qiu tried to walk back his comments and declared a day of national mourning, the damage was done. Victim's associations would in time morph into groups campaigning for political change at the top, one of these was formed by a political unknown named [[Linge Chen]] who would  unseat the party only ten years later. The [[1982 Kaiping earthquake]] was thus a watershed moment in [[Daxia]]n history, from then on the NRF would have to resort to outright electoral fraud and heavy handed repression to maintain its grip on power, and even this would prove to be not enough by the early 90's. The era of NRF rule after the earthquake is named by historians as '''the Slow Death''', a period of inertia and decay as the economy slowed down dramatically and social unrest at the party's misrule grew exponentially.


During [[Min Bib Doda]]'s last year in office his government had borrowed excessively from overseas lending institutions to finance big ticket projects and speed their completion in a rare display of short term thinking and fiscal irresponsibility by Doda; he desperately wanted to give his chosen successor a boost in the polls. To start paying off the principal and accumulated interests of these onerous loans, Yang Qiu was now forced to implement measures of austerity or 'Republican Austerity' as he liked to call it. He ordered massive cutbacks in provision of health and social services, slashed education and school budgets, froze salary raises across the board (not even to keep up with inflation). All major infrastructure projects were put on hold and he even started to cut down pensions, an incredibly costly political move as the elderly were assiduous NRF voters. By turning the debts incurred by Doda on his behalf into something every [[Daxia]]n had to suffer for, Qiu destroyed any goodwill he had left with the public. People on the street started calling him the 'Old Satrap' and people said that if he slept through cabinet meetings the country was being led by an old man asleep at the wheel. There were serious doubts about the wisdom of Qiu running for a second term due to his clear and rising unpopularity. Yang Qiu silenced these 'tapeworms in the party's belly' with the intelligence services which remained fully loyal, although some of the 'tapeworms', many important of them political operators, began to quietly distance themselves. The president was duly confirmed as the NRF presidential candidate for 1984 during a televised party conference, widely mocked for the grave demeanour of the party heads sitting next to the president, the worry evident in their expressions.
During [[Min Bib Doda]]'s last year in office his government had borrowed excessively from overseas lending institutions to finance big ticket projects and speed their completion in a rare display of short term thinking and fiscal irresponsibility by Doda; he desperately wanted to give his chosen successor a boost in the polls. To start paying off the principal and accumulated interests of these onerous loans, Yang Qiu was now forced to implement measures of austerity or 'Republican Austerity' as he liked to call it. He ordered massive cutbacks in provision of health and social services, slashed education and school budgets, froze salary raises across the board (not even to keep up with inflation). All major infrastructure projects were put on hold and he even started to cut down pensions, an incredibly costly political move as the elderly were assiduous NRF voters. By turning the debts incurred by Doda on his behalf into something every [[Daxia]]n had to suffer for, Qiu destroyed any goodwill he had left with the public. People on the street started calling him the 'Old Satrap' and people said that if he slept through cabinet meetings the country was being led by an old man asleep at the wheel. There were serious doubts about the wisdom of Qiu running for a second term due to his clear and rising unpopularity. Yang Qiu silenced these 'tapeworms in the party's belly' with the intelligence services which remained fully loyal, although some of the 'tapeworms', many important of them political operators, began to quietly distance themselves. The president was duly confirmed as the NRF presidential candidate for 1984 during a televised party conference, widely mocked for the grave demeanour of the party heads sitting next to the president, the worry evident in their expressions.
 
Yang Qiu invariably won the election of 1984 but dropped fourteen percentage points from his first victory, down to sixty nine percent of the vote. Going by the rule that the party fraudulently doubled the number of votes received, it can be said with confidence that Qiu won no more than thirty six percent in truth. Strangely for Daxian presidential elections to that date, the president was dogged throught the campaign by the candidate of a small, recently formed political formation named the [[Party of Daxian Democrats]]. Its candidate was a total unknown, some accountant who looked as if he had been plucked from a catalogue of bureaucrats, but this [[Linge Chen]] was a strident and irascible orator who shamelessly mocked his elderly rival. At one point in the campaign [[Linge Chen]] sought out the president at a campaign stop in [[Minxia City]] and confronted him about the continued spilling of industrial waste on [[Lake Zhenzhu]], at one point pointing at Qiu with his finger and poking him in the chest. The president tried to play the elder statesman but looked clearly annoyed and rattled before the cameras. [[Linge Chen]] would later be arrested and charged with disrespecting the president and be prevented from continuing to campaign by a court order but nonetheless he made an impact; his small party would get almost twenty percent of the vote. In his book 'The Wave', [[Linge Chen]] revealed that important members of the RNF both from the Politburo and regional party leaderships met with him in secret and offered their resources to his project. Chen further claims that it was his ideas that attracted them but the truth may be less flattering, scared and sidelined members of the nomenklatura hedging their bets against a Yang Qiu loss. It is this quiet transfer of cadres from one party to another that may have been the deciding factor in the shock victory of [[Linge Chen]] and the [[Party of Daxian Democrats|PCD]] in 1986, snatching the capital from the government.




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