Shop owner Li Bai alleged local officials needed to be bribed to get anything done. But he also said President Hu Jintao, who toured the disaster zone over the weekend, and other central government leaders were capable of getting things done.

"After Hu Jintao came here, they finally started taking this disaster seriously," he said. "The central government just doesn't know how corrupt the officials are here. They just need to come more often to see it for themselves."

In a sign its aware of such complaints, a report Wednesday on the Web site of the State Council, the Cabinet, threatened officials with punishment if they misused relief funds or supplies.

At the same time, the government signaled it wanted state media to heed Beijing's orders and not stir up public passions. A notice on the Web site of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television — a media regulator — said media should "gather their minds and resources around the directives from the central government and ... cover the disaster rescue and relief efforts with a high sense of political responsibility."

"Maybe the criticism will harm the rebuilding effort because the local people's mindsets are already unstable," said Shao Peiren, a mass media professor at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou. "So responsible media should see the bigger picture."