Washington Post: China Feels Side Effects From SARS

GUANGZHOU, China, May 1 -- The mishandling of the SARS crisis is feeding tentative calls for political reform in China and has exacerbated a broad power struggle among current and former Communist leaders, according to government sources, journalists and political analysts.

The calls for change in the political system, emanating from the province believed to have been the breeding ground for the SARS virus, have been published in an open letter written by newspaper reporters and in an unusual, unsigned opinion piece in a popular newspaper. The theme has been repeated in numerous bolder postings on Chinese Web sites.

On one side of the divide is an increasingly strong alliance among China's new president, Hu Jintao, its new premier, Wen Jiabao, and senior officials allied with former premier Zhu Rongji, who have been moved quickly into positions of responsibility to deal with the crisis.

On the other side, government sources say, is a network of officials loyal to former president Jiang Zemin, who continues to exert significant influence from his position as head of the Central Military Commission, which controls the army.

Officials loyal to Jiang, who stepped down from the presidency in March, are believed to have backed the idea of underreporting the SARS epidemic and lying to the World Health Organization and foreign governments about its spread. Hu and Wen went along with that plan but, sensing an opportunity, changed course several weeks ago and now advocate more truthful reporting and cooperation with the outside world, officials in Beijing and Guangdong province said.

Analysts caution that the goal of Hu and Wen is not necessarily to encourage a more democratic China, but rather to claim more power and establish a more efficient administration.

"We should keep in mind that the current political system in China is not designed to allow press freedom, now matter how nice and benign Hu or Wen may be," said Yu Maochun, a China specialist at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis.

Complicating the battle at the top is the attitude of local officials and the public toward the Chinese leadership during the SARS crisis. Some provinces, counties and even villages have twisted SARS orders from Beijing, disregarded mandates or made up new rules. Villages around Beijing are blocking the movement of people through their territory to stop the spread of the virus. Until today, Shanghai was quarantining people from some regions hard hit by SARS for 10 days even if they had no symptoms.

Meanwhile, the disease continues to spread in China. An additional 187 SARS infections and 11 more deaths were recorded across the country today, according to government statistics. There have been 3,638 confirmed SARS cases and 170 deaths in China since the epidemic began. The Beijing city government has quarantined more than 12,700 people and said today it would start to appropriate hotels, training centers, hostels and resorts to "prevent against and control the spread of SARS."

The public calls for reforms have been tentative and polite. The first mention came in the form of an open letter, written by, among others, Lian Qingchuan, the editor of the 21st Century World Herald, a newspaper that the government closed in March after it violated censorship regulations by publishing several articles discussing political reform and the SARS epidemic in Guangdong. Lian and others called on the government to give a complete accounting of the epidemic and to permit foreign doctors to enter the country and treat patients. So far about 3,000 people have signed the letter, organizers of the petition said.

The most significant call for change so far came on Wednesday in the Southern Metropolitan Daily, the most popular newspaper in Guangdong. In an opinion piece, an unnamed writer called for a "breakthrough" in the way the government deals with crises, information and its relations with its people.

"This crisis illustrates the need for timely and clear reporting of the truth to the people," the article said, "and the clear communication of what the government is doing to deal with the crisis and the problems it might face."

The SARS crisis has presented the government with an opportunity to win public trust and support, the article said. "SARS, from its beginning through its evolution, acutely shows the need for the improvement of traditional methods of administration."

Southern Metropolitan Daily has played a crucial role in the SARS story. Government censors warned the newspaper three times in February and March that its articles had violated censorship rules. At the time, the government was enforcing periodic bans on SARS-related stories.

The newspaper defied the ban in February and published an article that raised doubts about the source of SARS. State-run media were under orders to report that the source of the disease had been identified as the bacteria chlamydia, part of a campaign to claim that the disease did not originate in China. During the National People's Congress in Beijing in early March, the newspaper quoted a senior respiratory specialist as saying that SARS was not under control, directly contradicting government propaganda at the time that the disease had been contained.

Sources close to the publication acknowledged that the newspaper was running a risk in publishing the piece on Wednesday. But currently, the sources said, censors in the Ministry of Propaganda and provincial propaganda departments have not given clear guidance on what is acceptable to report about SARS.

While the workings of the Communist Party's inner circles are often impenetrable, sources in Beijing and Guangzhou said the SARS crisis has emboldened Hu, the new president, to use calls such as the one published Wednesday as a way to pressure former president Jiang and his allies.

During the 16th Communist Party Congress in November, Jiang succeeded in placing five loyalists on the nine-member Standing Committee of the Politburo, China's most powerful body. Jiang's maneuver effectively surrounded Hu with potential enemies. Jiang also succeeded in staying on as head of the military.

The problem with Jiang's allies, however, is that most of them have little practical experience in handling day-to-day issues. For example, Vice President Zeng Qinghong, who rose to power as Jiang's enforcer within the party, is a skilled politician and is known as a trusted interlocutor by U.S. and Japanese officials. But he had never held a government job.

In his moves against the Jiang faction, Hu has found a willing ally in Wen Jiabao, the new premier, who rose to his position with the backing of his predecessor, Zhu Rongji, who battled with Jiang unsuccessfully for more than a decade in Beijing.

Other Zhu allies who have risen to sudden prominence during the crisis have been Vice Premier Wu Yi, the highest-ranking woman in the government, who was appointed chief of the leadership team fighting SARS, and Wang Qishan, who was appointed acting mayor of Beijing. Wang is a longtime Zhu protege and solved a series of thorny problems involving billions of dollars in corruption cases in Beijing and Guangdong during the late 1990s.

The first casualty of the power struggle was Zhang Wenkang, the health minister and a former army doctor who was reputedly Jiang's personal physician. Zhang was booted from his post on April 20 for lying to the public by saying that SARS was under control. The second casualty was Meng Xuenong, the mayor of Beijing and an ally of Hu. Government sources said Meng's departure was the price Jiang exacted from Hu to get the obviously incompetent health minister out of his office, the sources said.

Jiang's allies were slow to respond to the about-face that Hu ordered for April 20, when the government inaugurated a nationwide campaign to begin truthful reporting about SARS. In the first few days, only Hu and Wen were seen on the state-run media. Slowly, each of Jiang's allies has emerged, somewhat halfheartedly supporting the campaign.

Jiang also expressed support for the new SARS campaign, but in a way that illustrated his conflict with Hu. On April 26, he made his first public statement about the virus from Shanghai, leaving many Chinese with the impression that he had fled the capital to escape the disease. Jiang appeared out of touch; Hu and Wen had been seen in the media almost daily on the front lines of the fight against SARS, at hospitals, universities and laboratories. And Jiang's remarks, saying "China has scored notable achievements in containing the disease," directly contradicted the tone being put forward by Hu and Wen that the disease had not been contained and that the country faced a crisis.

"The Jiang clique has miscalculated the situation and is becoming rapidly irrelevant," said Yu, the specialist at the U.S. Naval Academy. Chinese Internet chat rooms are full of invective against Jiang and significantly are not being censored.

"The popularity of Hu and Wen in comparison with the growing disdain and hatred for Jiang is stunning," Yu said. "Hu and Wen are now enjoying the image of leaders who put the people first, while Jiang is being chastised as a narcissistic freak obsessed with his own alleged charm."