Coronavirus shows how China has changed since SARS

Analysis

There are now around 7,700 confirmed cases in China, of whom 170 have died. The true numbers may be larger because not everyone who feels ill goes to hospital.

Some comparisons provide reference points:

• SARS infected 8,422 people and killed 916. It was less lethal than initially expected.
• The 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic infected an estimated 10-20% of the world's population and may altogether have caused hundreds of thousands of deaths.
• The 2014-16 Ebola outbreak in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone involved 28,616 confirmed, probable and suspected cases and 11,310 deaths.

China's vulnerability

China's large, dense, mobile population makes it vulnerable to infectious disease. It is particularly susceptible to zoonotic diseases such as coronaviruses, because very large numbers of people live in close proximity to livestock in regions that straddle the migratory ranges of disease-carrying animals such as bats.

Winter outbreaks also coincide with the world's largest annual migration of humans: the estimated 3 billion journeys made either side of China's Spring Festival national holiday.

The emergence of SARS

In late 2002, a new coronavirus began to be transmitted, starting in the city of Foshan in Guangdong province and spreading throughout greater China.

From its earliest recorded cases its spread was monitored by officials from the Ministry of Health. They did this secretly, under an official media blackout, because of the extreme political sensitivity of a once-in-a-decade handover to a new and as-yet-untested generation of Party leaders underway since November 2002.

This secrecy made it difficult for the central health authorities to take action to contain the virus. Meanwhile, by early February 2003, the Spring Festival migration had already begun.

Even without social media it was difficult to conceal the epidemic. Between February 8 and 10, 2003, text messages warning of the outbreak were forwarded over 125 million times in Guangdong alone, prompting the provincial government to make emollient statements about hand-washing.

By mid-March, when the months-long leadership handover was complete, the World Health Organization (WHO) had issued a global alert and advised against non-essential travel to Guangdong and Hong Kong.

Minister of Health Zhang Wenkang then called a news conference to manage the crisis. He referred to twelve known cases in Beijing, three of whom had died, but medical professionals subsequently told the media of 60 SARS patients in the specialist unit of one military hospital alone, seven of whom had died.

These reports quickly appeared in the foreign media, whose trenchant criticism prompted a more transparent approach. The leadership sacked Zhang, apologised for the lack of clarity and admitted to 750 suspected SARS cases in the capital. The Ministry of Health established a new, well-resourced central task force, which restricted travel and cancelled the week-long public holiday. SARS was gradually brought under control.

Impact of SARS

Travel restrictions had an acute effect on aviation and tourism, but this was temporary. Fears of a long-term effect on manufacturing supply chains and financial markets proved unfounded. GDP growth, both in greater China and South-east Asia, eventually belied downgrades issued following the WHO global alert. SARS had no apparent chronic effects on China's economy.

The government's mishandling of the outbreak, its culture of secrecy, unaccountability and bureaucratic inertia drew comparisons to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, that 'great accelerator' of opening up and reform in the Soviet Union.

SARS shed light on weaknesses in a one-party state that owed its grip on power in large part to an ability to ensure control over the flow of information to the public. Some speculated that the Party, if it survived at all, would have to engage in root-and-branch reform.

In limited respects, SARS did engender durable change in Chinese political culture. The Party admitted that it had lied. Health Minister Zhang and Beijing Mayor Meng Xuenang became the first ministers in Communist China ever to be held accountable and sacked during a crisis.

However, SARS did not chronically affect confidence in the Party, nor did it change the Party's overarching approach to information control. The 2008 Sanlu milk powder scandal, which hospitalised 53,000 infants, had at least some of the same causes (see CHINA: Governance weaknesses will sustain food crime - October 28, 2015).

In some ways, the crisis convinced the Party of a need for greater information control during a crisis. More than 100 people were arrested for "disturbing social order" by "spreading rumours". Twelve years later, a similar provision with much wider application was inserted into the criminal code.

This time around

Crises sometimes reveal things that the normal process of government obscures. SARS and Chernobyl revealed the fragmentation, secrecy and mendacity of the respective bureaucracies, and suggested a link between these frailties and the ineffectiveness of the response.

This time is different.

The government's reaction has been swift, decisive and apparently relatively transparent.

China is much richer now. Its healthcare system is better resourced and better placed to detect and treat infectious disease.

The government today is considerably more 'joined up'. It has consolidated central government ministries, most recently in 2018, leaving the cabinet with 15 fewer entities and a new National Health Commission (see CHINA: Party-state reforms streamline policymaking - November 29, 2018).

These changes have avoided at least some of the time-consuming turf wars between the Ministry of Health, the military, the Family Planning Commission and their local counterparts seen during the SARS crisis.

Lessons learned?

There are two lessons that the Party might draw from the comparison of SARS and the Wuhan coronavirus emergencies.

First, both outbreaks will be seen as ultimately validating the Party system, because it was able to respond effectively. In this view, the problem in 2003 was not the nature of the Party machine, but the manner of its operation -- the reluctance of officials to share information internally as well as with the wider world, and the lack of a strong central authority to take overarching decisions and coordinate the response.

Second, the greatest difference between then and now is the centralisation of power under President Xi Jinping. The faster, more decisive and better coordinated response will be seen as a clear lesson that more centralised control of the state apparatus enables better crisis response. In other words, it validates Xi's reforms.

Neither lesson points in the direction of lasting political change. The value of transparency -- the leitmotif of Chernobyl and its aftermath -- is unlikely to be among the lessons drawn, even if the authorities have been more willing and able to share information in 2020 than in 2003.