Poor construction practices by government contractors were widely blamed for the collapse of many schools and the deaths of many children during the Sichuan province earthquake that killed about 70,000 people and left nearly 18,000 missing in western China in 2008. Mixing sarcasm with envy of Taiwan’s willingness to hold developers accountable for how their buildings fared in earthquakes, one person wrote Tuesday night on Chinese social media that, “If they did it this way on the mainland, would there be any developers left in China?” The arrest of Lin, who had disappeared after the building’s collapse, came hours before local officials decided to deploy house-size excavating machines to drill, tug and tear at the huge mounds of debris on the site. Rescuers delayed using the equipment for three days after the earthquake, for fear that the machines might cause the wreckage to subside further, collapsing the tiny cavities in which more than 100 people are feared trapped.