The Straits Times: China is untrustworthy

STEVE FRIESS

BEIJING - Just when it looked as if China was about to emerge as the superpower of choice [...], along comes a killer virus to remind everyone why a superpower ruled by autocrats can be hazardous to everyone's health.

[...] This regime has magically reminded the planet in just a few weeks that it is untrustworthy and selfish - and why that matters.

That is an impressive feat, considering how successful the Chinese had been in the past decade at earning global love - and even a Summer Olympics - by opening its burgeoning economy to world trade while studiously avoiding criticising most foreign governments.

The deal was that China would keep its opinions to itself and allow the world to stake claims in the Chinese gold rush. In turn, other nations would let slide Beijing's horrifying crackdowns on freedoms of religion, assembly and speech.

Other governments have rationalised that the firm communist control is necessary to maintain social stability, which, in turn, is necessary to keep profit margins growing. All that capitalism, the best-intended thinking goes, will naturally lead to political freedom.

But now, with a perplexing coronavirus that has spread to more than 3,200 people in 23 countries, the deal with the devil is paying its miserable dividends.

China sat by idly for four months as Sars cases accumulated in its southern province of Guangdong, hoping nobody would notice so as to avoid embarrassment. The lack of a free press to alert the public to the developing pattern not only cost untold Chinese lives but put at risk tourists, businessmen and other expatriates. Among them are citizens of nations that didn't believe that Beijing's oppression affected them.

As Sars spilled over to the rest of the world, Beijing tried damage control rather than infectious-disease control, and failed at both. Health officials here have announced such laughably low infection numbers that one irate Chinese doctor was compelled to take the brave step of telling Time magazine that he personally knew of more cases in one Beijing hospital than the total claimed for the entire capital.

At the same time, a ridiculous effort continues to insist that Sars did not originate in China. World Health Organisation officials were muttering privately early this month that the Chinese had been slow to provide samples of the virus from mainland victims. Those samples, once obtained, showed the Chinese Sars has almost identical DNA as that found elsewhere. But a mainland doctor told Hongkong's South China Morning Post on Sunday: 'I do not share the view that Hongkong infections came from Guangdong'.

The health panic brought on by Sars is a result of Beijing's lack of credibility. Even now, the state-run English language China Daily keeps up its don't-worry-be-happy tenor by showing pictures of carefree Western tourists enjoying the sites and quoting alleged experts predicting little financial fallout for the overall Chinese economy.

Suddenly, the world's investors recall why China is still a risky place to open a franchise or build a factory.

If Beijing will lie about something as serious as its own public-health crisis, how trustworthy are the delirious economic statistics it publishes? And if there is no democratic way to remove corrupt leaders, isn't corruption a real threat to that cherished 'stability', too?

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The writer is a US-based freelance journalist. This comment appeared in The Baltimore Sun.

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