小泉首相の訪朝と課題について☆☆☆☆☆

SARS " new crisis, new disease, new leaders and same Old System "

Singing Old song
Coming collapse of China

John Pomfret of The Washington Post reports of the disease that "no concerted action was taken to control its spread until late January." Even then, officials failed to disclose that SARS was highly contagious. Guangdong authorities did not alert neighboring Hong Kong or even their counterparts in other Chinese provinces.

Officials suppressed news of the outbreak in state media until February 9. The Propaganda Ministry halted reporting on February 25, in order to control unfavorable news during the runup to the National People's Congress meeting, which began during the first week of March in Beijing.

In the meantime, there was panic in Guangdong as local residents, knowing of the outbreak but deprived of news, resorted to local remedies to protect themselves. Some thought that the disease was a strain of bird flu that had earlier plagued the area. Others called it weaponized anthrax that had leaked from a Chinese military lab. Everyone seemed to have a theory.

Only early this month did the central government permit W.H.O. representatives into Guangdong. Up until that time they were barred from traveling outside Beijing. Even in the capital they were kept in the dark. Then a courageous Chinese military surgeon, Jiang Yanyong, publicly accused health officials of covering up the truth. Dr. Jiang revealed that SARS patients were hidden in military hospitals. At that point, the W.H.O. -- and the rest of us -- began to grasp the extent of infection in the Chinese capital.

By then, however, almost everyone suspected that China's leaders were lying. One official after another told the public that the disease was "effectively controlled," but new cases were being constantly reported in ever more locations around the country. Foreign nations, and even the W.H.O. itself, posted advisories discouraging travel to the Mainland.

Premier Wen Jiabao, sounding exactly the wrong note at a time when a nationwide epidemic was ravaging his country, earlier this month said: "The Chinese government and people warmly welcome friends worldwide to come to our country for tourism, visits or to engage in commercial activities." That was just a few days before he declared that "the overall situation remains grave."

Grave? What is grave is the state of Beijing's new leadership. SARS has many victims, but the most prominent may be the Chinese Communist Party. Every change of leadership in the People's Republic understandably brings forth a new wave of optimism, and that was true when Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao were recently elevated to their current posts. President Hu and Premier Wen promised to do more for China's people, and observers around the world believed that there would be a new approach in Beijing.

Mainland doctors were muzzled by the system, but they used the Internet to disclose to the outside world the existence of unreported cases. "We get lots of e-mails from people in China," says Pat Drury of the W.H.O., referring to this recent phenomenon. Time magazine reports that it has heard from medical workers seeking to make known that SARS patients had been bused around Beijing to avoid detection by W.H.O. personnel inspecting military hospitals in the capital.