The dismissal of China's former health minister and Beijing's mayor for concealing the spread of SARS filled outside observers with expectations of Chinese policy transparency and openness. Leaders such as President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) and Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) have stressed that there is no way they will allow officials at any level to conceal the extent of the epidemic. But are the daily reports by Chinese officials really offering a true view of the actual situation? No.
The first person to expose the cover-up, thus setting off the SARS scare, was Jiang Yanyong (江延永), a physician at the 309th Army Hospital in Beijing. Now, revelations from the public continue to punch holes in the government's cover-up. The one stepping forward this time was Wang Yongchen (汪永晨), a journalist at China Radio.
Wang gained fame in China by focusing on ecological and environmental issues and is the founder of the private environmental group, Green Earth Volunteers. On May 5, Wang used the Internet to publish an "e-mail to a friend," which has now been widely distributed
Wang's e-mail pointed out that SARS had broken out in the dormitory of a publishing house in Beijing's Chaoyang district and had already resulted in one death, one person hospitalized and four people running fevers. Despite this, the people living there were still free to come and go, and the hospital persisted in sending those with a fever back home. More than 10 coworkers who were in contact with the deceased were still working.
Wang called the police several times to report the situation without getting any kind of response, so he had no choice but to use the Internet to alert his friends. His report shows that the authorities are still concealing the extent of the epidemic. A journalist friend of Wang's says that the situation is much worse than the government has admitted.
It has been long known that the Chinese government has been concealing the situation -- any-one would have cause to doubt the reported figure of six cases in Shanghai, given the city's huge, densely packed and mobile population. The World Health Organization believes that Shanghai is concealing the actual situation, but has as of yet been unable to find evidence of this. If Shanghai, which has always enjoyed a reputation for relative openness, is behaving like this, it is only too easy to imagine what the situation is like in areas and provinces further away from Beijing.
The question of how many SARS patients there are in China and how many people have succumbed to the disease may, in fact, never be known.
There must be economic considerations behind this cover-up. SARS has dealt a severe blow to the Chinese economy and it is this that is the lethal threat in the eyes of the government. Shanghai is normally a showcase for China's rapid economic development, and the country will suffer if Shanghai is crippled by SARS. This is probably the real reason why Shanghai has reported only six cases.
China's continued cover-up of the SARS situation is also a reflection of the political friction encountered by Hu and Wen. Throughout the fight against SARS, we seem to have seen only Hu and Wen, with the addition of the work of someone called Wu Yi (
This clearly shows that Hu and Wen's political authority is still not firmly established. I'm afraid the question of whether they will be able to take this opportunity to consolidate their hold on power has become the most urgent item on their agenda.
Wang Dan was a student leader during the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations in Beijing.
Translated by Perry Svensson
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) trip to China provides a pertinent reminder of why Taiwanese protested so vociferously against attempts to force through the cross-strait service trade agreement in 2014 and why, since Ma’s presidential election win in 2012, they have not voted in another Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate. While the nation narrowly avoided tragedy — the treaty would have put Taiwan on the path toward the demobilization of its democracy, which Courtney Donovan Smith wrote about in the Taipei Times in “With the Sunflower movement Taiwan dodged a bullet” — Ma’s political swansong in China, which included fawning dithyrambs