Posted on 04/27/2003 2:51:10 PM PDT by MadIvan
When Chinas leaders turn left out of their residential compound in Beijing they instantly come to Tiananmen Square. As they shuttle across the vast expanse to emergency meetings on the Sars epidemic this week, they will be met with silence.
No more than a dozen visitors are now loitering in the worlds biggest urban space. The virus is emptying out the city. Up to one million people have fled Beijing and millions more are hiding in their homes to escape infection.
In their desperation, the leaders may recall how waves of bicycles (and later bodies) filled the government quarter in 1989. The democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square were, of course, dealt with in the standard fashion of authoritarian regimes. They were crushed. But how to deal with Sars? Tanks are no match for viruses; only efficient and credible governments are, and Beijing has shown itself to be neither.
The past few weeks have provided an extraordinary display of incompetence, obfuscation and obstructionism. Beijings attitude is summed up by the response to a hospital inspection by the World Health Organisation two weeks ago. To hide the scale of the Sars problem, highly infectious patients were packed into ambulances and driven around the city for hours until the WHO inspectors had left. Outraged doctors later leaked the story to journalists.
When the Government finally admitted the full extent of the epidemic, the populace panicked and Beijing became engulfed in its biggest political crisis since 1989 bigger than the spy plane stand-off with the US two years ago, or the Nato bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, or various Taiwan crises. All of these enhanced the regimes domestic power, if anything. Whether due to patriotism or propaganda, Chinese rallied around the crimson flag. The political impact of the Sars crisis is likely to go in the other direction.
Only weeks after the new leadership around President Hu Jintao entered office with promises of greater openness and concern for the disadvantaged, the Government secretively gambled with lives. Talk of political reforms and administrative restructuring at the recent National Peoples Congress now seems ludicrous. As a result, public confidence has waned yet again, as has Chinas international standing just when Beijing had mended fences with the US. To his credit, Mr Hu sacked two officials last week and instituted new measures to fight Sars. But it may be too late to stop the economic damage. The full impact on GDP will take months to filter through, but already a nightmare scenario is emerging in the worlds fastest-growing economy.
Fear of coming into contact with the infected has shut down most business activity. Conferences are cancelled and public meeting spaces are closed. Retail sales, an economic mainstay, have collapsed and foreign investors, the driving force in industry, now shun the country.
Even more than in Western democracies, economic growth is key to Beijings political stability. After the upheavals of 1989, the Chinese leadership struck an implicit bargain with the people. If you accept that we hold power and that there wont be free elections for another generation, then we will make you rich. In the past decade of accelerated economic reforms, Beijing was able to deliver on its promise. Colour televisions, fancy restaurants and mobile phones are ubiquitous in most parts of China now. Car ownership and international travel have become a middle-class staple.
This turnaround in the way most Chinese live was made possible by an economic growth rate officially recorded as 8 per cent per annum. That means Chinas economy has more than doubled in size since 1989. Millions of workers laid off by inefficient state factories were able to find jobs in the booming private sector, which now makes up about half of GDP.
But if Sars were to push down the growth rate to, say, 4 per cent considered more than respectable in the West Beijing would face severe political turbulence. The halving of GDP growth is likely to hit the most productive parts of the economy hardest, since they are usually not cushioned by the Government. The millions of jobs recently created are just as easily lost again.
If Tiananmen Square were to fill up now with the unemployed and angry middle classes instead of students, the effects of this crisis could equal the political impact of the massacre in June 1989. Between 300 and 3,000 demonstrators died in and around Tiananmen Square at the time, according to estimates.
Sars, in recent weeks, killed more than 130 and the epidemic is nowhere near its peak. At the current infection rate and experts believe it could accelerate as spring turns into summer the virus may soon have claimed more victims than the tanks.
Regards, Ivan
Yeah right! 130 I believe that don't you. Hong Kong officially has more deaths last I looked. The epidemic started in China. That just doesn't make any sense to me. They are lying through their teeth.
Yeah right! 130 I believe that don't you. Hong Kong officially has more deaths last I looked. The epidemic started in China. That just doesn't make any sense to me. They are lying through their teeth.
Now ---People would probably keep out of that square, because they know they should - for their own health's sake. They have the internet, CNN (the international version) and they know what's going on. It doesn't stop the anger the people have for their government, and they should be angry.
At any rate, Tian'anmen,as big as it is, is only a speck.
No one wanted to be the messenger and give bad news to a new government who is trying to get themselves established. This keeping the news rosy, is as old as history I guess.
I don't think it will be the end to Communism in China. Is it really "communism"? At any rate it won't be the end to the hard central rule, but I hope it scares the gov't enough to demand an accounting from the top down and the bottom to the top.
It is such a complicated issue - aside from the incompetence, and the economic effect. I hope they can get a handle on things -- for the peoples sake. I hear they are starting to STRONGLY crack down on the spitting, instead of just a simple fine. 'bout time!
I'd like to see some up-to-date charts on population ratios of the infected, the deaths, and cures - not only in China but in Hong Kong and other affected areas. I would also be interested in a breakdown of the stats in China - as to their own cities and regions.
Consider the following chain of events:
Chinese government lies and incompetence -->
increasing panic -->
the tanking of Chinese economy -->
a lot of unemployed, angry, (and SARS infected) people turning on their government.
The root cause of TAM uprising in '89 was also the economic slowdown, which produced a sizable number of the unemployed.
Actually, this crisis can be an opportunity for Hu Jing-Tao to expand his power base by purging the Shanghai mafia headed by Jiang Zemin. A lot of Jiang's cronies are in charge of many important posts now. Hu can brand them as incompetent and corrupt. He could then sweep them aside, bring in his own people.
We will see how the power struggle unfolds. It is interesting to see how much mileage Hu can get out of this. Since he is in power only for a short time, he can reasonably claim his innocence, while blaming the crisis on Jiang's cronies.
Who is it who has been pulling on the reins on N.Korea?
Currently, Hu is part of a collective leadership. As such, his power is checked by Jiang's cronies. But this kind of crisis provides an window of opportunity for him to hit Jiang's faction by marshalling public anger to mobilize party grassroot. A major political crisis is always a force multiplier.:)
He may not topple Jiang's faction outright but he can cut down its size.
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