Editorial: Unanswered questions remain

On Tuesday, the World Health Organization (WHO) removed Beijing from both the SARS travel advisory list and the list of SARS-affected areas. Now only Taiwan and Toronto remain on the WHO's SARS-affected areas list.

Beijing's removal from the lists was good news. Appropriate control of the epidemic in China has to be good news for its neighboring countries, which will naturally be free from the risk of getting another SARS outbreak from China.

But one has to wonder, as Cabinet spokesman Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) did -- how did China get off the WHO's lists? Lin expressed "great interest" in the issue, while also congratulating China for Beijing's success.

Lin said the Cabinet was happy to see the SARS epidemic subsiding in various parts of the world. He said the government will work harder to ensure that this country will also be removed from the WHO's list of affected areas as soon as possible. The epidemic situation in China is not transparent, Lin said, so how Beijing got itself removed from both lists at the same time is an interesting question.

According to his understanding, Lin said, China has conducted "epidemic control" by moving patients to the outskirts of Beijing. Therefore, the Department of Health will further study the standards by which Beijing was removed from the lists and adjust its own policies accordingly.

Of course, suspicions need to be backed up by evidence. Otherwise, China will accuse others of jealousy. The question is, under China's authoritarian regime, even common knowledge can become state secrets. The WHO was not able to investigate China's epidemic properly. It would be difficult to acquire evidence to show China is still covering up the epidemic. In fact, is such a country worthy of jealousy?

But on the other hand, coming from a democracy, perhaps we are being too hard on China. We believe the Chinese authorities do care about the rights of the SARS patients -- that they will sneak such patients to secret locations and treat them there. The question is, does China need to take such a troublesome approach -- to play a game of cat and mouse -- with the WHO?

If we look at China from a dictator's perspective, perhaps epidemic prevention is a cinch. Perhaps the Chinese authorities have been honest all along and SARS has long been relegated to the dust bin of history under the Chinese Communist Party's drastic measures.

If we look back at the history of the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward, we have reason to believe that the only thing China needs to do is summarily execute probable and suspected SARS patients and send everyone under quarantine to the labor reform camps in the Gobi desert -- even the most virulent SARS virus in the world cannot survive the party's iron-fisted suppression.

Just looking at China's attempts to block Taiwan in the WHO, we have reason to believe that SARS has long disappeared from China. Beijing does not need doctors to fight SARS -- all it needs is Red Guards. Under China's political surveillance system, which encourages school children to report on their parents, SARS indeed has nowhere to hide.

In contrast, Taiwan is a country of mobs, the opposition leaders being mob leaders holding the government hostage. It will be difficult for such a country to get rid of SARS. It would actually be very easy for the Chinese authorities to help Taiwan fight SARS -- just detain all the KMT and PFP politicians and send them to the labor camps in China. Taiwan would then be free from SARS.