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Can China Cure Its Severe Acute Reluctance to
Speak?
Washington Post ^
| Sunday, April 27, 2003
| Joan Kaufman
Posted on 04/27/2003 8:55:55 AM PDT by Dog Gone
Forty-four years ago, China's respected defense minister, Peng Dehuai, tried to bring to the attention of other senior leaders the fact that millions of people around the country were starving to death as a result of misguided economic policies. But Chinese Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong did not want to hear that his policies were a failure. So he and his followers branded Peng an "anti-Party element," and the blunt, able Peng was put under house arrest in a village outside Beijing. During the Cultural Revolution he was jailed, tortured and killed.
At first glance, it may appear that little has changed in China. Like word of the famine, honest reporting of data about severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), the latest threat to China's economic plans, got lost somewhere among the doctors in Guangdong province, local and provincial leaders, Beijing officials and the public. None of the doctors or officials possessed the stature of the revolutionary war veteran Peng, and they must have feared the consequences of raising an alarm on the eve of a key National People's Congress and change in leadership. When an honest and outraged military physician in Beijing earlier this month broke ranks and exposed the severity of Beijing's SARS epidemic, he was placed under surveillance by the public security bureau. China has rarely rewarded individuals who have sounded discordant notes or uncovered unpleasant facts.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: china; sars
I know it's the Post, but there is some interesting information about rural medical care in China further in the article.
1
posted on
04/27/2003 8:55:55 AM PDT
by
Dog Gone
To: Dog Gone
An up-to-date version of the three monkeys.....see no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil........would show pandas wearing face masks while in the original poses.....the Chinese version.
To: Dog Gone
Thanks, Dog Gone. This is important. The Chinese government's lack of openness and integrity could lead to a SARS pandemic, at least in China and similarly poor, backward, and unfree countries.
3
posted on
04/27/2003 9:15:53 AM PDT
by
solzhenitsyn
("Live Not By Lies")
To: Dog Gone
One side effect of this is the lack of accountability of health officials. In Henan province, as a result of a failure to follow sterile procedures, the AIDS virus was given to hundreds of thousands of unsuspecting blood donors, many of them poor people trying to make money by selling their blood. Even after the problem became clear to local and provincial officials, they concealed the scandal for years and blocked others from engaging in reporting, research or prevention. The health minister and the mayor of Beijing have already lost their jobs for concealing cases of SARS from a WHO team, but the powerful Henan officials who hid the AIDS epidemic remain in office. This is the first time I have heard of this.
4
posted on
04/27/2003 9:31:15 AM PDT
by
SC Swamp Fox
(Aim small, miss small.)
To: Dog Gone
You're right, it was worth reading.
Obnoxious getting there, though. Guess today I'm an 84 year old woman from some really obscure zip code.
5
posted on
04/27/2003 9:33:36 AM PDT
by
EternalHope
(Boycott everything French forever.)
To: SC Swamp Fox
What I found fascinating is that the central government has virtually no control over the health care in the provinces. Nor does it give them much assistance.
Gone are the days of a communist system. These clinics must charge their patients in order to stay open.
6
posted on
04/27/2003 9:50:55 AM PDT
by
Dog Gone
To: EternalHope
Unless you delete the Washington Post cookie from your computer, you won't have to register again. I forget who I registered as, but I think I was little girl from Fargo, North Dakota. It was months ago.
7
posted on
04/27/2003 9:53:25 AM PDT
by
Dog Gone
To: SC Swamp Fox
It was posted here, seems they would take the blood and mix it all together and rebottle it.....
8
posted on
04/27/2003 9:55:39 AM PDT
by
tet68
(Jeremiah 51:24 ..."..Before your eyes I will repay Babylon for all the wrong they have done in Zion")
To: tet68
The biggest problem is that they re-used needles over and over again. They spread HIV among the donors, which is inexcusable.
9
posted on
04/27/2003 10:01:26 AM PDT
by
Dog Gone
To: Dog Gone
Unless you delete the Washington Post cookie from your computer, you won't have to register again. I forget who I registered as, but I think I was little girl from Fargo, North Dakota. It was months ago. Every few months I delete all the old internet stuff that builds up in memory. It is surprising how much accumulates.
The main hassle is loss of cookies. It means I have to go through some extra steps on a few web sites, like the Washington Post. Next time I'll probably be 2 years old. I wonder if they will ever wise up and screen out the bad data.
10
posted on
04/27/2003 10:52:32 AM PDT
by
EternalHope
(Boycott everything French forever.)
To: Dog Gone
As I've said on other threads, there are two problems. One is that in Communist regimes population statistics, health statistics, and death rates are state secrets, highly classified. The other is that lower level functionaries never report bad news, because they don't want to be the messenger that gets shot. (Yes, in tyrannical societies, they really do shoot the messenger.)
Not much has really changed, although the writer wants to think that things in China are now more liberal and they will soon become just like us. The Chinese government acted after 6 months instead of several years first because Sars is bad for business, and second, because it's a threat to the health and lives of the leadership. They might catch it and die too, unlike the Great Leap Forward, where only peasants and small people (officially class enemies) died.
11
posted on
04/27/2003 10:59:27 AM PDT
by
Cicero
(Marcus Tullius)
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