Sars: Silence spells doom for China

Gordon Chang, the author of the apocalyptic 'The Coming Collapse of China', was in Taipei recently to attend a seminar pertaining to the future of China and Taiwan.

When asked about the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars), Chang said, ''China can look very modern in many aspects. But when it comes to some very crucial issues, such as public health, the communist government has changed very little from the Mao (Zedong) era.''

Chang is an American of Chinese origin, whose long span of career as a lawyer for a top US legal firm in the crypto-communist country has helped him gain tremendous insight into the system of governance in China.

In other words, Chang is no arm-chair critic who, as many westerners do, sit in the comfort of their offices in New York, London or Berlin and look at China from afar, which is why his views, no music to the ear of the Beijing authorities, are taken seriously by many.

The new administration of China under President Hu Jin Tao has scored badly in handling the Sars crisis - o­ne of its first tasks since Jiang Ze Min moved behind the scenes two months ago.

Instead of putting the whole country and the outside world o­n alert, the authorities in Beijing had resorted to covering up the early cases of Sars and preferred to deal with the situation in a clandestine manner, or, as Chang has said, in Mao's way.

It was after the epidemic got out of hand in southern China and Hong Kong that the Chinese government finally allowed the World Health Organisation (WHO) experts to enter the country to take part in an investigation.

As far as I can see, there are several factors that had influenced the government's decision to block the news immediately after the first few cases had been reported.

Firstly, announcing to the world that China was now confronted with a deadly virus would force the health authorities to allow medical teams from the United Nations to come in and hence have access to certain vital state information o­n public health.

For years, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been resisting the pressure for the United Nations to participate in the fight against Aids and HIV in China.

Lao Mu, an investigative journalist, visited an 'Aids village' in He Nan province, where the Aids epidemic is believed to be most aggressive, in August 2001. The local health official refused to release the number of HIV cases in his county. According to the locals, the figure was anywhere between 80,000 to 400,000, although the official number remains a state secret.

To ensure tighter control o­n the issue, the Publicity Department of the Central Committee of the CCP issued an internal circular for the media in early 2002, holding them responsible for aggravating the Aids crisis by highlighting the issue and, thus, destabilising society.

Gao Yao Jie, a retired gynaecologist and Aids/HIV activist, was given the Jonathan Mann Health & Human Rights Award by WHO in 2001 in recognition of her relentless effort in helping children made orphaned after their parents died of Aids.

She has been warning that a national tragedy would be in the making if the state continued to play down the scope of the crisis. True to form, the Chinese authorities banned her travel overseas to receive the award.

As with the Aids crisis, Beijing sought to suppress news about the outbreak of Sars early this year, but failed.

Now that containing the information has become impossible, the government is pledging to cooperate with the WHO in all aspects. However, it remains in doubt as to what extent will Beijing be open in disclosing relevant information.

Too thorough an investigation may lead to the disclosure of other 'state health secrets', such as the Aids epidemic in He Nan. This dilemma partly explains why the authorities were keeping mum o­n Sars in the early days of its outbreak.

Secondly, China is inundated with groundswells of public discontent and social tension, just that the authorities have been, for now, able to sweep them all under carpet with an iron fist. Daily protests and confrontations with police, albeit scattered, are reported in the rural areas from the provinces of Liao Ning and Hei Long Jiang of the Northeast to Si Chuan in the Southwest.

In these places, state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are in dire straits due to mismanagement, and foreign investors are being invited to come in and take over them. In a true-blue capitalist fashion, many SOEs are being forced to lay off workers, resulting in massive unemployment in both rural and urban areas. Little surprise that the workers are furious. The lack of technology investment has also impoverished the o­nce fertile farmlands, so the peasants are feeling the pinch too.

Both the workers and the peasants are now the angry lot in China, and this is o­n top of the millions of migrants in the cities who feel increasingly marginalized in the light of their poor living conditions. The undercurrents are strong, testing and pushing the limits set by the government o­n daily basis.

A single spark can set off a prairie fire. As a political party founded o­n the back of public resentment against the corrupt Kuomintang regime in the 1920s, no-one understands the saying better than the Chinese communists.

The failure to track down the origins of Sars would be seen as yet another blow to the much questioned legitimacy of the o­ne-party dictatorship of the CCP. Although China has officially apologised to the world for not having been forthright with the Sars information, the government continues to censure any in-depth discussion of the crisis in the domestic media, and the issue is a taboo for all websites or o­nline chat-rooms in China, apparently for fears that certain quarters may hijack the issue to mobilise the masses.

Thirdly, China has come to be seen as a factory of the world (or a global sweatshop, depending o­n what you see there), thanks to its incessant supply of cheap labour.

China's entry into the World Trade Organisation compels the government to allow more foreign investors to buy up the many dying industries in the country and set up new o­nes, in the hope that jobs would be created to cater to the jobless o­n the street. Failing that, the very reason for the WTO membership would be discredited, and public bitterness would grow, perhaps beyond control.

Telling the world that China now had a killer epidemic would deter foreigners from entering the country, and many potential jobs would be killed, another reason why the CCP has been slow in responding to Sars.

Although the government has proudly announced this week that foreign direct investment (FDI) for the first quarter of this year has increased by 56.7 per cent year-on-year , it remains to be seen how things will play out for China's FDI as the Sars crisis unfolds.

Indeed, the outbreak of Sars and the mishandling thereof have highlighted the serious void of transparency in the Chinese government, and with it comes the question of credibility too.

If the CCP had kept the whole world uninformed of the deadly disease so 'successfully', how much has its financial system been open to the international business?

If the world is unsure, why the global rush into the Chinese market as if the rest of the world was a barren land? This is precisely the point that Gordon Chang was driving at.

William Perek Jr, a columnist for Bloomberg News, is more succinct: China Incorporated is big o­n spin and small o­n transparency. (To be fair, given the wishy-washy response of the Health Ministry at the early stage of Sars, Malaysia Inc may fare slightly better o­n this.)

For a foreigner, the question is simple: do you still trust the figures released by China's health authorities? If you find it hard to believe what the health spokesperson says about China's public health, how o­n earth would you want to undergo such a great leap of faith as to put your lifetime investment there?

Politically, the Sars incident has somewhat affected China's relations with two important regions: Hong Kong and Taiwan. The former is already under its rule, and the latter it continues to claim its own.

Go to any website or chat-room in Hong Kong that facilitates discussion o­n Sars, o­ne will be lucky not to encounter any four-letter word or curse o­n the Beijing authorities and the Tung Chee Hwa administration.

Many people of Hong Kong tend to attribute Tung's inability to contain the virus o­n the island to his lack of authority and political legitimacy under the People's Republic of China, and the incident has served to foster greater nostalgia for the erstwhile British rule.

"If the British were still here, I am sure Hong Kong would not have descended into such a terrible state. Look at how they dealt with the mad cow disease ten years ago,'' o­ne poster said.

Across the Taiwan Straits, the pro-independence forces have been using the crisis as yet another justification to block the proposal to establish direct transportation and trade links with China.

President Chen Shui-Bian has even blamed Beijing for waiting too long before disclosing vital information about the outbreak o­n the mainland, and called China's political reforms ''all phoney''.

Businessmen have no motherland, so the mysterious virus will not dampen the zeal of Taiwanese investors to venture into the mainland. However, it will certainly make the Taiwanese people think twice before they seriously toy with the idea of a closer union between the two countries.

Needless to say, with the magnitude of the Sars blunder, the task of winning the hearts and minds of the people in Hong Kong and Taiwan is now all the harder for the CCP.

For the Chinese authorities and, to a lesser extent, the people of Chinese origin who harbour the Greater China Complex to varying degrees, the Sars crisis has to be seen as a valuable lesson. As Gordon Chang rightly puts it, we must see China for what it is, not what we hope to see in it.

It is very well and fine that the world hopes for a better China, but o­ne must not lose sight of the very problems that are plaguing the country today.

The fact is, China does have serious problem dealing with vital issues, otherwise o­ne cannot explain why Singapore has been able to control the situation through thorough disclosure of information, while the death tolls o­n Sars continue to rise both in mainland China and Hong Kong.

Chang may sound like a doomsayer, but some doomsayers do turn out to be very good at their job: just look at how correct Paul Krugman was about the so-called Asian Miracle back in 1994, which instantly made him a persona non grata in many Asian countries.

China aspires to be a great country. Being a major ancient civilisation, I think it deserves to be o­ne. But with great countries come great responsibility too.

Let's hope that the policy and decision makers in Beijing will pay heed to the points raised by Chang and others, and address them with appropriate measures, so that the world may be spared further health disasters coming from the most populous nation in the world.

JOSH HONG is trained in international politics. While distraught by all o­n-going global conflicts, he nevertheless considers reconciling the many paradoxes and differences in human life to be a cause worthy of lifelong pursuit.