Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
suggests, politicians have strong incentives to exploit crisis and danger and emphasise
the risks of inaction in order to mobilise opinion and arouse action. In view of the
dying communist ideology and official resistance to democracy, the legitimacy of
the current regime in china is performance based, rooted in delivering economic
growth. the possibility of an economic recession caused by SarS, therefore, posed
a direct threat to the regime's legitimacy. In the words of Premier wen Jiabao, 'the
health and security of the people, overall state of reform, development, and stability,
this perceived crisis impelled the central leaders rally the full potential for
autonomous action. on 17 april the Prc's national leaders convened an urgent
meeting to kick off a national war on the epidemic. this dramatic policy switch
was accompanied by a significant relaxation of media control as government media
began to publicise the number of SarS cases in each province, updated daily. the
crisis also led to government efforts to increase bureaucratic control and earmark
more financial resources for anti-SARS campaign. On 23 April, a task force
known as the SarS control and Prevention Headquarters of the State council
was established to coordinate national efforts to combat the disease, with vice
Premier wu Yi appointed as commander-in-chief. the same day, a national fund of
2 billion yuan (US$242 million) was created for SarS prevention and control. as
part of a nationwide campaign to mobilise the system, the State council sent out
inspection teams to 26 provinces to scour government records for unreported cases
and to fire officials for lax prevention efforts. According to the official media, by
8 May China had sacked or penalised more than 120 officials for their 'slack' response
to the SarS epidemic. these actions shook the complacency of local government
officials, who then abandoned their initial hesitation and jumped onto the anti-SARS
bandwagon. with the intensive and direct involvement of the party centre, maximum
interagency and intergovernmental cooperation were achieved. Indeed, it took only
one week for china to construct and put into operation a SarS hospital that had the
capacity to accommodate 1200 patients.
In addition to this augmentation of state capacity, the crisis apparently forced
the government to take steps to establish an image of a more open and transparent
accident in April that had cost 70 lives, which marked a significant departure from
the traditionally secretive approach taken to the nation's military disasters. the
SarS transparency campaign also provided incentives to be more open in dealing
with other infectious diseases. after July 2003, information on current veterinary
epidemics, such as foot and mouth diseases, swine vesicular disease, and avian
influenza were no longer classified as state secrets.
In retrospect, the SarS crisis challenged the traditional concept of governance
in China and helped to elevate the status of public health significantly on the
government's agenda. the government has now realised that economic development
does not trickle down, and that public health should be treated as an independent
criterion of good governance. Premier wen said that 'one important inspirational
lesson' the new chinese leadership learned from the SarS crisis was that any
