Silent For Too Long

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When a medical team from the World Health Organization (WHO) met with China's Vice Premier Wu Yi on April 9, members hoped they had found an ally in their efforts to get bureaucrats to come clean on the extent of the mainland's SARS epidemic. The Communist Party's most senior woman, Wu is a tough, gray-haired former trade negotiator, and she understood that the free exchange of information on the disease, believed to have originated in China, could help WHO investigators prevent a global pandemic. Wu said she had personally dispatched crews to two provinces to investigate outbreaks, and promised improvements in China's updates on the number of infected. She even told members her concern kept her up so many nights that "I'm taking sleeping pills."

She might need to renew her prescription. A week later, hospitals in the capital city of Beijing were playing shell games with SARS patients, moving them around the city in ambulances so they wouldn't be discovered by the WHO. Patient numbers were still being underreported (the WHO says there may be 200 cases in Beijing compared with the official government number of 40), investigators were not allowed access to medical records, and whistle-blowers were offering embarrassing accounts of official cover-ups to the foreign press. China's new leadership, led by President Hu Jintao, suddenly found itself entangled in an international credibility crisis. Finally, months after the outbreak began, the Politburo Standing Committee, the country's top ruling body, ordered an end to the obfuscation: late last week, the committee demanded "accurate, timely and honest reporting of the SARS situation" from cadres throughout the country. With it came a warning: local and provincial officials "will be held accountable."

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The leadership's desire for full disclosure may be too little, too late. China's mishandling of the health scandal has exposed the contradiction between the country's ongoing global economic integration and the authoritarian government's reluctance to allow the free flow of information. Complicating the problem is the fact that the government is operationally in the hands of tens of thousands of bureaucrats whose objective is often hiding bad news from their bosses, even at the expense of public health and the country's reputation. "The leadership wants the country to be an economic power without changing the political system, but is realizing too late that the two go together," says Wu Guoguang, a former party official now teaching at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

When the crisis began, Beijing's top concern was ensuring economic growth. Propaganda departments barred the media from covering the outbreak, worried that word of a mysterious new disease spreading on the mainland would crush commerce. In his first comments on the disease—coming five months after the initial signs of the illness—Minister of Health Zhang Wenkang on April 3 scoffed at the WHO's warnings to avoid travel in southern China, believed to be the source of SARS. "It is perfectly safe to come to China to work, travel and hold business meetings," he insisted.

But people kept getting sick, and as news of fresh victims leaked out, Hu's efforts to shape his new government in a populist, people-first mold have been undermined. China's booming economy, which grew nearly 10% in the first quarter, is feeling the fallout, too. The volume of fast-food sales in chains like McDonald's and KFC fell 20% in southern China in recent weeks, according an industry source (KFC confirms sales fell but says they are now returning to normal). Despite the WHO's travel warning, the government refused to cancel its twice-yearly Guangzhou Trade Fair, which began on April 15 in the capital city of a province that has reported nearly 1,300 cases of SARS. Last year, 135,000 foreign businessmen elbowed through exhibition halls at the fair, signing $18.5 billion in deals. Fewer than 8,000 people attended this year's SARS-tainted affair, which featured mainly rows of bored Chinese exhibitors from around the country. Many of them would have stayed home, too, but the government ordered them to attend. "We know the situation is bad and scary, but as a Shanghai organizer, I had to tell our companies that it is okay," says Ms. Hou, who is overseeing a 1,000-plus person delegation. When her group returns to Shanghai, it will be quarantined for 14 days. The exhibition "is too desperate for money," Hou complains, "and our lives are at risk." Hers and, across China, how many more?