Sitting before a backdrop that said “We are together,” newscasters introduced scenes of mourning from across the nation: rows of uniformed police officers clutching candles, disheveled quake survivors weeping in the rubble and hundreds of students in raincoats forming the words “We love Yushu,” the name of the county that was hit hardest by the quake.

The programming was the same on every channel.

On the Internet, people flooded bulletin boards with outpourings of emotion and expressions of solidarity with the stricken. During a three-hour televised gala on Tuesday night, more than $307 million was donated by state-owned enterprises, army units and viewers. A similar telethon for the Sichuan earthquake, by comparison, raised about $214 million.

Although the Qinghai death toll is far smaller than the 90,000 who died in Sichuan, the government’s aggressive relief effort in Jiegu, the breathless coverage in the official media and the organized bereavement underscored the Communist Party’s determination to rally the nation and transform the disaster into a showcase of the party’s benevolence and resolve.

In recent days, Beijing has promised to spend $161 million on relief efforts, and more than 10,000 soldiers, police officers and emergency workers have made the arduous journey to the quake zone, which sits 13,000 feet above sea level. Relief convoys were so thick earlier this week that they caused a 24-hour jam on the only road that links Jiegu to the provincial capital 500 miles away. Would-be volunteers have been ordered to stay away.

Given that most of the victims were ethnic Tibetans, the earthquake has also presented leaders of the party an opportunity to show its softer side to a citizenry that is sometimes at odds with the Han-dominated government in Beijing. Newspaper headlines have emphasized ethnic unity in the face of tragedy. Banners draped across military relief trucks declared, “Whether Han or Tibetan, we are all one family.”