Today, the mayor of Beijing and the minister of health, Zhang Wenkang, resigned in disgrace. Thanks to international pressure, the government finally let in the World Health Organization (WHO), and after a week of claiming "growing cooperation," Beijing hospital doors were finally pried open. The 36 confirmed Beijing cases increased to over 300, with 400 more under inspection. Had the local governments of Guangdong and Hong Kong been successful at keeping their cases contained within those provinces, there likely would have been no reports of SARS after the initial February spread in Guangdong. At that time, aside from Iraq, coverage of the 10-day Beijing party conference was the focus of media attention. Though unfortunate, it's thanks to the large number of Canadians and Singaporeans affected that China has received necessary international criticism and WHO service.
My fate will be decided in the week to come, for tomorrow the WHO will arrive from Beijing. All the study-abroad students and office staff are cynical, for how could Shanghai, the financial capital and business hub of China, a city of 13 million, have avoided all but two cases, when Beijing, with one million fewer people, has 300 confirmed? Aside from my host parents, who are skilled at reading between the government lines, most Chinese I've spoken to tell me not to worry, reciting, "The news say there are only two cases in Shanghai!" In a few days the WHO will produce a report, and if one zero is added, I stay. If two are added, I may not, or my program may be cancelled. It's hard to envision leaving early when my plan is to stay the summer and teach English, but then my program may be cancelled early anyway, since a third of the students have already decided to go home.
The worst part is the day-to-day uncertainty regarding every aspect of this disease, even with Internet and short wave radio access to outside media. The alternative to Chinese press is the Western press, which, often unable to squeeze believable numbers from the Beijing government, makes up its own complementary stories. Thus my mother called me a week ago telling me she'd heard that there are 300 to 500 cases in Shanghai and thousands unreported in Beijing. Today, the online Drudge Report casually speaks of the "700 confirmed and unconfirmed cases in Beijing." A responsible reporter would make the division clear, since those numbers are available. So I can't believe these non-Chinese sources any more than the whispers here on campus that one professor has just returned from Hong Kong and has a high fever, or that a student just died at a nearby university.
The people in China are not panicking, but more and more are noticeably changing their routines. I haven't gone to a club myself for a month-such places are full of travellers, sweaty and maskless. Not that the face masks you see people wearing in photographs are anything more than placebos, since they are, on average, just strips of gauze. Vinegar is also a popular preventive "medicine." My host family avoids crowded places and practices frequent hand-washing. Yesterday, on the weekly trip to the grocery store, we judged the crowd unsafely dense and quickly left. However, SARS has had a positive effect: people have stopped spitting everywhere all the time. When I first arrived in Shanghai, all I could do was hope the people walking past me had good aim.
It's hard to tell where to pin most of the blame for the epidemic. One part is bureaucratic inefficiency: military-run hospitals have had different case-reporting mechanisms. Another is ineptitude in containment, as with the patient who escaped from quarantine in Hong Kong. Pride is the third; as reported by Time Magazine, Beijing hospitals hid hospitalized SARS patients from the WHO by putting them in ambulances and driving them around the city streets. None of the three is reassuring.
The number one problem isn't pride though. It's the government's policies on the press.
China's economy is in some ways more capitalistic than the United States, though neither country would ever admit it. The government's attitude towards social order, however, isn't yet anywhere near laissez faire. This isn't perceivable in everyday life; I talk about whatever I want to whomever I want, and though rarer than in the United States (save Amherst College), there are plenty of students who openly express oppositional views. However, they can't publish or otherwise proselytize such opinions. I'm told the Chinese government blocks over 10,000 websites. This is quite amusing, since for every well-known site they block there are hundreds of equivalent, lesser-known ones, that anyone can find with a web search. When I got here, CNN.com wasn't available. So I read Salon.com.
However, freedom to access information isn't quite the same as freedom of the press. Every publication must be approved by a the government. While most Chinese students I've spoken to agree with me that independent newspapers are desperately necessary, one girl insisted that chaos and panic too often result from an overly free press, and are compounded by capitalistic media competition for ratings.
Beyond a naive appeal for journalists to use their freedom wisely, to be inquisitive, but not to sensationalize when facts seem dull, I don't know how to guarantee journalistic integrity. I can only recommend that readers make good use of their freedom too. Never stick to just one source. Everyone knows the award for objectivity doesn't go to China Daily, but neither does it go to Time Magazine, The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal. You all aren't trapped behind a bamboo curtain, so start clicking beyond The New York Times.