The Hindu : SARS politics

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, May 24, 2003

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SARS politics

By P. S. Suryanarayana

Any failure to overcome the SARS epidemic can decelerate or even bring to a standstill China's dynamic economy.

THE CHALLENGES of containing and rolling back the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) have almost imperceptibly acquired political overtones. It is easier to discern this reality in the case of China rather than the other SARS-afflicted countries. In a sense, this aspect is a positive commentary on the growing transparency of the changing `communist' system in China. Moreover, the new Chinese leaders, who came to power in March this year, are striving to ensure that the spiralling SARS crisis does not destabilise their country even as they battle the disease by adopting firm and, more precisely, drastic measures.

A particularly significant move in China is the latest executive decision to impose the capital punishment on those who might put the society at risk by breaking the SARS-related home-quarantine orders or by mindlessly mixing with others while still being infected. Such a deterrent penalty is reflective of two possibilities. At one level, the authorities are surely concerned about the pandemic potential of the SARS crisis. At another level , though, the sheer frustration of the Chinese population is no less evident behind the compulsions that have impelled the authorities to think of such a sweeping measure over a purely social question.

From the standpoint of the leaders in Beijing, any failure to overcome the SARS epidemic can decelerate or even bring to a standstill China's dynamic economy. Any such scenario would be totally unwelcome. Not surprisingly, therefore, the new Chinese Prime Minister, Wen Jiabao, has opted for a hands-on approach in dealing with the SARS turbulence. His unstated, although obvious, objective is to prevent the social and economic consequences of SARS from assuming the proportions of a popular unrest. Among all the Chinese leaders at the centrestage today, Mr. Wen is the one most actively engaged in feeling the pulse of the people. Certainly proactive, too, is the Chinese President and the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC), Hu Jintao, who took over the reins from Jiang Zemin. However, Mr. Wen's pivotal position as the chief day-to-day administrator has almost inevitably catapulted him to the position of being the visible leader with a healing touch. Nonetheless, his general political style, too, makes it a natural agenda for him. His people-friendly style, somewhat populist by the yardstick of conventional democracies, was in evidence at his first press conference in Beijing as the new Prime Minister in mid-March — coincidentally at the very same time as the SARS outbreak was gradually, yet surely, becoming a major source of concern to the international community.

To miss the wood for the trees is to try and ascertain whether Mr. Wen or Mr. Hu or indeed Mr. Jiang, who retains power behind the scenes as the elder statesman and Chairman of the Central Military Commission , is more actively involved in pulling China out of its current state of sorrow. The real issues at stake centre around the circumstances in which SARS broke out and on the people-friendly ways in which a catastrophe could be avoided. After appearing to have been slow in recognising the severity of the crisis, for whatever reasons, China is today fully seized of the grave disaster. Relevant to any durable solution of the riddle is the exact origin of SARS itself.

Three theories have been bandied about, especially on the international stage outside China. No hard evidence whatsoever has been cited by those who tend to argue that either Beijing itself or a foreign force inimical to China could have been responsible. The unproven hypothesis, in both these cases, is that SARS could perhaps be traced to an alleged biological weapon test of one kind or another. In one scenario, an unsubstantiated suspicion is that a biological agent or ingredient might have been accidentally unleashed during a purported weapon testing in China itself. The other assumption is that the virus could have been planted in China by a foreign force, perhaps even a non-state actor. Both these allegations fall flat for want of any scientific data and also because the creeping spread of SARS, over a period of several months, does not support the hypothesis of a weapon-test gone awry. Seasoned diplomats on the Asia Pacific circuit, therefore, tend to dismiss the untested allegations regarding a man-made cause. This leaves the field clear for the theory of a natural cause — the mutation of a previously existing virus and the gradual spread of the new and potent variant.

It is against this background that China has been harping on its own decision to turn the spotlight on scientific research regarding the causes of SARS and its cure. This policy, too, is reflective of how far the present Chinese leaders are inclined to feel the pulse of the people in a political sense. While China's long-term political stability is linked to its gigantic project of overall economic modernisation, given that the CPC continues to hold power as decisively as ever before, the more immediate tranquillity of the country is sought to be sustained by its leaders through a war on SARS.

With the epidemic having placed China in a hot spot, especially in East Asia, Mr. Wen has reassured the leaders of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) about Beijing's political will and public health efforts to contain the disease. More importantly, he has announced a contribution of 10 million yuan (over $ 1 million) towards an anti-SARS fund to be managed by China and the ASEAN to carry out scientific research and other relevant combat activities. Of considerable relevance to China in its anti-SARS campaign is the moral support from various powers ranging from the U.S. to Japan as also India. With leaders such as Mr. Wen now acknowledging that the Cultural Revolution and a few other past campaigns have not really helped China, the present anti-SARS drive, which is fast acquiring the hallmark of a major social-political exercise, is generally expected to be free of ideological overtones or at least excesses.

With SARS spreading from southern China to other places such as Hong Kong as also Singapore and Canada besides Taiwan, thanks mainly to Beijing's growing connectivity with the global economy, the anti-SARS campaign has to deal with a facet of globalisation. However, given Beijing's current equation with Washington, the latest anti-SARS drive may be free of perceptions of the U.S. as either a global hegemon or a reluctant sheriff of the world. While the problems confronting Hong Kong are not very different from those of China in the anti-SARS drive,

Taiwan's main concern is to avoid the mistakes of the other two. Canada, in some contrast, has come on the right side of the World Health Organisation after taking a few false steps. Singapore, among all the SARS-afflicted areas, has tried to walk the extra mile in a bid to go beyond the remedial measures that the WHO has advocated. It is the first to enact stringent legislation to deal with deviant behaviour by those quarantined and others as culpable offences and not just public health challenges.

With many SARS cases in Singapore having been traced to the initial transmission of the syndrome in the hospital designated for treatment, the authorities of the City-State face a qualitatively significant public health challenge in feeling the political pulse of the people, who have been brought up on a diet of globalisation fruits in recent years.

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