SARS Forces Change in China

Illness could hasten reform

By Laurie Garrett STAFF CORRESPONDENT, Newsday.com

May 18, 2003

Beijing - Highly placed political observers in China say the SARS epidemic is forcing a lasting change in how this nation sets its priorities and discloses information about everything from diseases to military matters. If the Beijing government can stamp out the epidemic before the end of the summer, they say, the power of President Hu Jintao will be solidified and China's slow march toward liberalization and reform will continue.

The SARS epidemic, particularly China's admission of cover-up and deceit in its handling of the outbreak for five months, has been likened by many observers to the Chernobyl nuclear power accident in Ukraine in 1986. Millions of people were exposed to radioactive isotopes, which the Soviet government of Mikhail Gorbachev sought to deny and cover up. As the scope of the Chernobyl disaster became apparent, it forced the communist leadership to admit its wrongdoing and contributed to the ultimate breakup of the Soviet Union.

Sources close to the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee report that the Chernobyl analogy has been raised inside party leadership - which has discounted it, at least to some degree. But there appears to be consensus that severe acute respiratory syndrome will hasten the pace of reform of health care and other public systems and increase the government's openness to the outside.

Such external openness may not, however, translate into any significant changes in the short term in how the Communist Party runs this nation, or what information is available for domestic consumption.

Noted Chinese dissident leader Wei Jingsheng says SARS has created an unusual moment of openness in which China's leadership has been forced to concede not only to the World Health Organization, but also to its own people, that it erred.

In Washington, Jeffrey Bader, senior vice president of the consulting firm Stonebridge International, argues that China has a credibility gap that needs a quick mend, particularly with its neighbors in Asia. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao acknowledged as much in an April 29 speech to members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations who had gathered in Bangkok to find ways to tackle SARS.

"The Chinese government is a highly responsible government," Wen said, "ready to face difficulties squarely and putting the health, safety and life of the people above everything else. We have and will continue to take resolute steps in an effort to turn the situation around."

Key among those steps, Wen said, was enhancing China's friendly and transparent relations with its Asian neighbors. Overall, insiders say, China's leaders realize that the economic future rests on foreign investment as well as trade within the Asian region: Both are imperiled if the country is seen as a threat to the health security of its neighbors and the rest of the world. And Wen and the new minister of health, Wu Yi, recognize that China cannot guarantee to its neighbors that there will not be another SARS-like crisis in the future without demonstrating a commitment to candor regarding health information.

"In the short term, there will be a slow but positive trend in Chinese politics," Chu Shulong, director of the Institute of Strategic Studies at China's Tsinghua University, said in an interview. "But five years from now, we will see major changes."

The April 20 admission by China's leadership of a SARS cover-up was followed by open discussion of a power struggle within the Communist Party leadership between former President Jiang Zemin and current pro-modernization President Hu Jintao. Insiders now insist that the struggles were worked out at the Communist Party Congress in mid-March, with all aspects of dealing with the SARS crisis placed in the hands of Hu.

"One can argue that the SARS situation positively affects the power of President Hu Jintao," Sonny Lo, a professor of politics at Hong Kong University, said in an interview. "In the long run, President Hu will even reinforce his power base if SARS dies down. But if SARS worsens, Hu will be in trouble. Then we will observe whether there will be a backlash against the current leadership."

Observers in Hong Kong are especially optimistic about the SARS impact on Chinese politics and Hu's long-term intentions.

"I think we will see greater and greater transparency in China because of globalization," said Joseph Cheng Yu-shek, a professor of political science at City University of Hong Kong. "Once the Chinese realized that they were under severe criticism from abroad for their handling of SARS, China became transparent."

Cheng and Lo point to China's recent acknowledgment of an April 26 submarine accident, in which all 70 hands on ship died, as a sign of a new openness. But academic observers in China and Hong Kong, as well as Beijing insiders who spoke on condition of anonymity, agree that Hu's efforts to reform China will be stymied by party leaders in the provinces and government administrators. Such local officials had covered up details of the unfolding epidemic in Guangdong province, and health officials inside the nation's capital hid details about Beijing's epidemic.

"Cadres in China want to hide things from their leaders, hide bad news, look pretty," Cheng said. "That culture will not change quickly."

Already 120 officials have been fired for dereliction of duty on the fight against SARS, including the Communist Party leaderships of several counties in poorer provinces. But high-level sources in Beijing say Hu and Wen know that changes at all government levels will take years.

The primary concern of the Chinese leadership, Chu insists, "is the stability of their government, not the health and safety and welfare of the people. The number-one issue in their minds is preventing social unrest. Now they see SARS seriously, because they know whether or not they bring it under control quickly affects the possibility of social unrest."

Thanks to SARS, China's leaders now "see health as a national security issue," Chu said, and they will take "big steps after SARS to improve the health system."

But China's Communist Party does not see the weaknesses exposed by SARS as indications of basic flaws in its style of government, Chu insists, but as managerial problems. Several observers likened the leadership to a board of directors running a corrupt corporation: Its primary goals would be to stay in charge of the company, prevent information about company misdeeds from going public, and quietly discipline those responsible.

Nevertheless, "this is a very real opportunity for us," a leader in China's HIV fight said, asking not to be identified.

Perhaps the strongest sparks of optimism can be seen among HIV/AIDS activists and scientists here, who say China's health leaders have requested new proposals for carrying out HIV education campaigns and treating AIDS patients.

"In the long run, we see more openness and transparency will be there on the HIV issue," Dr. Sun Gang, head of the Beijing office of the United Nations AIDS Programme, said in an interview. "But we still need more proof of it in the short run."

But this openness seems to have limits and contradictions. Chu points out angrily that the national evening TV newscast, the most influential source of information in China, has yet to list the number of SARS cases in the country.

On May 9, two labor leaders were sentenced to prison for "subverting state power." Their crimes included participating in a March 2002 demonstration in the city of Liaoyang, protesting local corruption, listening to Voice of America and talking to two foreign journalists. And two reporters working for the official government news agency, Xinhua, were fired for publishing the Communist Party's SARS emergency acts - matters that were considered state secrets.

The Communist Party has resurrected a network of community cadres that monitors the activities of fellow citizens - specifically, to hunt down possible SARS cases, apartment by apartment. A decade ago, these cadres were feared, as their reports often led to arrests.

Slogans throughout Beijing brag that the Communist Party will defeat SARS, and the strong-arm approach to disease control is winning praise in many quarters. Textile chief executive Zhang Wen Xue, owner of Link Yarn Cashmere Industries Co. Ltd., guides a visitor through his modern sweater-making factory in Beijing's industrial park, explaining that under recent edicts, he would be thrown in prison if he failed to report a SARS case among his work force. To prevent an outbreak, his employees, most of whom live in dormitories next to the factory, are only allowed to leave the site if they promise to wear masks at all times and be sprayed with disinfectant upon return.

"It's a good thing we have a Communist Party," Zhang says, "because only a Communist Party can make a [SARS] decree and be so feared that everybody obeys. Now if you don't report a SARS case, you will lose your position in government."