Six years after its sluggish response to SARS, China has been criticized for overreacting to swine flu, showing it still has to find the right prescription for dealing with a health crisis, experts said.
With memories of the SARS crisis still fresh, China reacted quickly and aggressively to keep the swine flu outbreak from its shores. But although China has learned from its attempted cover-up of the more deadly SARS in 2003, it had miscalculated the severity of the swine flu threat, upsetting other countries as a result, the experts said.
“The Chinese leaders do not understand the need to avoid overreaction. Their understanding of the foreign media and foreign public opinion has always been astonishingly inadequate,” said Cheng Li, a China scholar at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.
China has aggressively screened incoming foreigners, suspending flights to and from Mexico — where the virus first emerged — and quarantining many foreigners.
Mexico complained bitterly at the Chinese moves, saying China was discriminating against its citizens by quarantining them even when they had no flu symptoms and had not traveled from Mexico. Canadian officials have raised similar concerns.
Such measures were imposed despite warnings from the WHO that they would have “very little effect” in containing the virus.
China and Hong Kong have so far confirmed four cases, all of them involving travelers from abroad.
“China’s swift and decisive action indicated the government had learned from the SARS episode that cover-up or inaction was not only impossible, but counterproductive,” said Yanzhong Huang, director of the Center for Global Health Studies at Seton Hall University in the US. “What the government is now doing, however, also suggests that it failed to differentiate between the viruses in terms of virulence and transmissibility.”
Beijing also banned pork imports from Mexico and areas of the US and Canada, where A(H1N1) has appeared — prompting Canada to threaten a WTO complaint — even though eating pork poses no risk.
“The measures taken by [China] are causing problems in its relations with other countries and the already bruised economy — pork prices dropped significantly because of the fear of pork products,” Huang said.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on Tuesday declared martial law in an unannounced late night address broadcast live on YTN television. Yoon said he had no choice but to resort to such a measure in order to safeguard free and constitutional order, saying opposition parties have taken hostage of the parliamentary process to throw the country into a crisis. "I declare martial law to protect the free Republic of Korea from the threat of North Korean communist forces, to eradicate the despicable pro-North Korean anti-state forces that are plundering the freedom and happiness of our people, and to protect the free
CHAGOS ISLANDS: Recently elected Mauritian Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam told lawmakers that the contents of negotiations are ‘unknown’ to the government Mauritius’ new prime minister ordered an independent review of a deal with the UK involving a strategically important US-UK military base in the Indian Ocean, placing the agreement under fresh scrutiny. Under a pact signed last month, the UK ceded sovereignty of the Chagos archipelago to Mauritius, while retaining control of Diego Garcia — the island where the base is situated. The deal was signed by then-Mauritian prime minister Pravind Jugnauth and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Oct. 3 — a month before elections in Mauritius in which Navin Ramgoolam became premier. “I have asked for an independent review of the
France on Friday showed off to the world the gleaming restored interior of Notre-Dame cathedral, a week before the 850-year-old medieval edifice reopens following painstaking restoration after the devastating 2019 fire. French President Emmanuel Macron conducted an inspection of the restoration, broadcast live on television, saying workers had done the “impossible” by healing a “national wound” after the fire on April 19, 2019. While every effort has been made to remain faithful to the original look of the cathedral, an international team of designers and architects have created a luminous space that has an immediate impact on the visitor. The floor shimmers and
‘VIOLATIONS OF DISCIPLINE’: Miao Hua has come up through the political department in the military and he was already fairly senior before Xi Jinping came to power in 2012 A member of China’s powerful Central Military Commission has been suspended and put under investigation, the Chinese Ministry of National Defense said on Thursday. Miao Hua (苗華) was director of the political work department on the commission, which oversees the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the world’s largest standing military. He was one of five members of the commission in addition to its leader, Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). Ministry spokesman Colonel Wu Qian (吳謙) said Miao is under investigation for “serious violations of discipline,” which usually alludes to corruption. It is the third recent major shakeup for China’s defense establishment. China in June
RSS