The full effects of typhoon Morakot, which hit Taiwan on Saturday 7 August, are only now beginning to emerge. The death toll as at 17 August was 124, but this did not include the hundreds of villagers feared buried under a mudslide that hit the village of Hsiaolin in Kaohsiung county in the south of the country.

The Taiwanese government has been widely criticised domestically for reacting too slowly to the disaster. It has also been accused of declining help from overseas, leaving thousands of people stranded in remote mountainous villages without …