Hong Kong media reported that a case of foot-and-mouth disease was identified about two weeks ago in a rural area outside Beijing, and that more than 2,000 infected cows had been exterminated and quietly buried. However, when the media started investigating, Beijing officials denied that there had been an outbreak of the disease. In view of the Chinese government's prior record of handling epidemics, no one should be surprised if Beijing is frantically trying to cover up an outbreak.
There is an old Chinese saying that "family shame should not be revealed to the outside." While there is nothing wrong with covering up one's own shortcomings, the same cannot be said if such concealment could harm and injure others.
When it comes to matters as serious as the outbreak of an epidemic, concealment could destroy the lives of many innocent people. Under the circumstances, Beijing's repeated attempts at covering up the spread of epidemics, most notably demonstrated in its handling of the SARS outbreak, is completely unacceptable.
Concealment of matters such as these, by itself, is completely at odds with the importance and respect that should be attached to people's health and lives. In this regard, Beijing's selfish conduct already exposed the fact that it has no regard for fundamental values that are universally embraced by the modern world. It also demonstrated the feudal ideas to which the Beijing regime still clings. What makes its conduct even more unforgivable is the fact that experience should have taught the Chinese government that it is completely incapable of controlling epidemics on its own, as the SARS outbreak showed. By refusing to disclose information about epidemics until the matter is completely out of control, Beijing deprives itself of much-needed outside help from international organizations such as the World Health Organization and from neighboring countries.
In this regard, Taiwan is probably the biggest potential victim owing to the geographic proximity of the two countries. For example, in June 1999, foot-and-mouth disease broke out among cattle on Kinmen. Despite a large-scale campaign to exterminate the sick animals, the disease still spread to Taiwan. It was later discovered that the epidemic had been caused by sick cattle smuggled from China to Kinmen. As a result, there is still a ban on the importation of live cattle from Kinmen to Taiwan.
The possible outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the health and sanitary hazards to which Taiwan is currently exposed. Although bird flu has now spread to both Shandong and Jiangsu, leading AIDS researcher David Ho (
Therefore, it was not at all surprising that the death of a Taiwanese man who had just returned from China almost triggered nationwide panic about the possibility of a recurrence of SARS, although it was later verified that the man had not died from the disease. This demonstrates how much the people of Taiwan were traumatized by the spread of SARS from China to Taiwan in 2003.
In view of the serious health hazards China poses, the World Health Assembly's refusal to admit Taiwanese observers because of objections from Beijing is acutely unacceptable.
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