SARS challenges China's communist system

BEIJING -- China's handling of the SARS virus has generated public outrage and laid bare the weaknesses of its communist system. But China's new rulers could emerge even more powerful, armed with tighter central government rule and heightened social controls, all in the name of fighting the disease.

The disease, whose first case was recorded in November in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, emerged just as President Hu Jintao, Premier Wen Jiabao and others were taking power in a long-planned handover from an older generation.

The new government endured criticism that it tried to conceal the scale of the outbreak, but after weeks of silence, Hu and Wen asserted themselves. They launched a government response of almost unprecedented scale, mobilizing thousands of health care workers and promising to talk honestly about the disease.

"The SARS crisis has provided the central leadership a major opportunity to bolster its authority through the sacking of officials (and) the mobilization and distribution of resources," said Dali Yang, a political scientist at the University of Chicago.

By Tuesday, the worldwide death toll from SARS rose to at least 480 after 16 new deaths were reported, including eight in China. More than 6,600 people have been infected, mostly in China.

China catching up

Though China's leaders have talked tough, World Health Organization Director-General Gro Harlem Brundtland warned Tuesday that China still did not have a handle on severe acute respiratory syndrome.

"Certainly, we have not seen a peak in China yet," Brundtland said. "There is obviously an increase in the outbreak going on."

Even so, the campaign has allowed Hu and Wen to emerge from the shadow of former President Jiang Zemin, who stepped down in April but retains influence as head of the commission running China's military.

They have been honest -- acknowledging the crisis is "grave" -- and severe. Wen ordered officials at all levels to work hard against the illness or face harsh punishment, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Tuesday.

"It is very important to do the job well in Beijing, which is the capital and the political and cultural center of the country," Wen was quoted as saying.

The image of Hu and Wen leading the anti-SARS fight contrasts the arrangement that many had foreseen -- a collegial, consensus-oriented leadership by the ruling Communist Party's nine-member Standing Committee.

Led by Hu, the party demanded urgent action -- and quickly enforced its orders by firing lower-level officials accused of negligence.

Hu dismissed Health Minister Zhang Wenkang, who was accused of bungling the response to SARS. The political symbolism was especially striking because Zhang was once Jiang's personal physician. Beijing Mayor Meng Xuenong, a Hu ally, was also removed in what appeared to be a trade-off among ruling factions.

While Hu and Wen appear nightly on state television, the rest of the ruling elite -- in party posts with no direct role in the public health effort -- get little coverage in the state press.

China's initial handling of the SARS outbreak led to comparisons to the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, the world's worst nuclear accident that sent a radiated cloud over Ukraine and Belarus. Both were characterized by bungling and secrecy that prompted anger among citizens and outrage abroad.

Yet while reforms launched by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev ended in the collapse of his government, Hu's government is in no such danger, barring a sharp economic decline, said Steve Tsang, director of the Asian Studies Center at St. Antony's College, Oxford.

"I don't see SARS as China's Chernobyl yet," he said.

Thousands quarantined

Strict measures have put more than 25,000 people in quarantine across China, but there have been several recent reports of protests by villagers fearful that SARS patients at local hospitals would infect their communities.

Hu and Wen still face pressure from local officials for greater reform and autonomy that could weaken central rule -- something that makes the two leaders uneasy, a Chinese writer close to the party said on condition of anonymity.

Despite promises of openness about SARS, Hu's administration still could reverse that policy if the political or economic cost is too high, the writer said.

The University of Chicago's Yang said, "While SARS will help ratchet up the trend toward greater transparency and accountability, I don't expect a fundamental break with the past."