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The mysterious pneumonia-type disease that has struck Hong Kong and spread around the world has caused considerable alarm. It has killed at least 10 people worldwide and infected over 500 more. In an indication of how serious a threat this could be, the World Health Organization took the unusual step of issuing an alert that travelers should avoid Hong Kong and Southern China. Medical experts in Hong Kong now think that they have identified the pathogen that causes the disease. While it's too early to say that things are under control, the disease's spread may be slowing.
One lesson that should be learned from this episode is how important a free press is. The disease almost certainly originated in China. Numerous deaths from a mysterious respiratory disease occurred in the southern coastal provinces of Guangdong and Fujian over the last several months. Indeed, the first cases of what's likely the same disease showed up in Guangdong in mid-November. By early January, panic had spread to some Guangdong cities.
Rather than trying to get to the heart of the problem, however, Chinese officials covered up the situation, repeatedly insisting that everything was under control. It wasn't until mid-February that Guangdong authorities told the world that over 300 cases of the unknown disease had occurred in their province since November.
FOLLOW THE LEADER. Still, that didn't mean the authorities wanted to share what they knew with their own citizens. "There are light cases of this illness as well as heavy, but most are not that serious," was how one senior hospital administrator put it to Peter Wonacott of The Far Eastern Economic Review. "The people may not be able to distinguish this."
This statement bears looking at more closely. Implicitly, this senior official is saying that people should trust the government, because knowledgeable medical personnel can distinguish the serious cases from the casual ones. This is typical of the "government knows best" attitude that is so damaging to China. And it's typical of the secrecy that surrounds so many situations.
In this case, it's clear that the secrecy was not because the government knew best -- in fact, Chinese medical authorities initially misidentified the cause of the disease as Chlamydia pneumonia, a misdiagnosis that they have only recently backed away from.
NON-PRESS CONFERENCE. Officials wanted to avoid panic, sure. But I'll bet that the real reason for not coming clean was that they were embarrassed. And they felt it was better to suppress bad news than to deal with it. This kind of government butt-covering happens everywhere. But China is different because it doesn't have a free press. That meant the coverup could succeed for months -- months in which the disease affected many more people, including some who died.
Tellingly, when pharmaceutical giant Roche held a local press conference in February in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province and only an hour by train from the Hong Kong border, to promote one of its existing flu treatments, the authorities ordered local media not to report on the event. Worse, Chinese authorities went after Roche for having the temerity to hold a press conference on a subject -- people getting sick from a mysterious disease -- that no one was supposed to talk about. Instead, word of the event leaked out through text-messaging via cell phone and over the Internet.
It's only when the problem spilled beyond its borders that China had to confront its mistakes. Contrast that behavior with Hong Kong, where officials have forthrightly met the press and worked with international authorities. Secretary for Health, Welfare & Food Dr. Yeoh Eng-kiong has been giving daily media briefings where he is barraged by questions from a tenacious local media. The briefings are Webcast, so anyone can tune in.
HEART OF DEMOCRACY. The South China Morning Post alone has run more than two dozen stories about the disease. Many of the Post's articles have included criticisms by the public that the government isn't doing enough to spread the word about health precautions. In response, officials have promised to improve content in its public-service announcements.
This is what a free press is supposed to do -- draw on the collective wisdom of citizens to try to deal with problems. Indeed, the reason a free press is at the heart of a democracy -- and why dictators fear it -- is that it's one way ideas are passed around. It's also how ideas are tested. Nothing could be scarier to those who want to control information or to those who think that their ideas have a monopoly on truth.
Any mishandling by Hong Kong of the pneumonia scare pales in comparison to what has happened across the border, however. And this public debate of ideas is one reason I remain optimistic about Hong Kong.
Chinese leaders often say the free press is a luxury they can't afford. Jiang Zemin and other leaders take pride in saying that for them, the most important human right is making sure that China's 1.3 billion citizens are fed and housed. But as the world has seen all too tragically in this situation, the free press is something that China can't afford to be without.
Clifford is Hong Kong bureau chief for BusinessWeek. Follow his China Journal column every week, only on BW Online Edited by Douglas Harbrecht
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