Chinese Officials Cover Up the True Situation of the SARS Epidemic to Save Their Jobs

For the most part, the SARS situation in China has been covered up. The Chinese government has raised the alert level of SARS to "life and death." Recently, the Chinese government held an internal teleconference and relayed one of Jiang Zemin's orders, namely: "If more SARS infections and proliferations are reported, local government and party officials will be subject to immediate dismissal." Moreover, the teleconference also relayed procedures on how the army should be involved, on how to seal off local areas, and on how to promptly cremate bodies and impose news blackouts in case of emergency.

Caption of the above pictures: After the May issue of the Chinese magazine "Caijing" (Chinese Economic Review--the most popular financial magazine in China) reported on the real situation of SARS in China, the government banned the June 2003 issue from being published.

The recent large-scale cleanup and censorship of "non-cooperating" media in China was just part of this emergency policy. The latest issue of "Caijing" magazine was originally published on June 20. A week later, however, the magazine was taken out of circulation by the government.

A doctor in Guangdong Province who asked not to be identified said, "There have never been any firm numbers on SARS. Beijing has already distributed target quotas to all the locals and each has their own quota. We all reported the findings based on the quotas assigned by the Central Government. As everyone could readily see, the data figures quoted by Chinese government were evenly matched."

A Shenzhen Public Security Bureau policeman who was responsible for disposing the bodies of SARS victims said, "Because of the strong infectious nature of SARS, the public security bureaus has been directly responsible for the cremation of SARS victims."

The policeman also said, "The maximum number of deaths in Shenzhen was set at no more than 30 by Beijing. In fact, the actual number of SARS related deaths in Shenzhen far exceeded the officially reported number. There were a lot of deaths in Shenzhen, and the number was no less than neighbouring Hong Kong."

According to a survey, many Shenzhen citizens did not believe the SARS situation that the government reported. Most people in Shenzhen watched Hong Kong TV programs. They could see that Hong Kong had free health care for all Hong Kong residents; its health care was far superior to Shenzhen. Yet the figures published by the Shenzhen government were much lower than those in Hong Kong.

Because of the ironclad orders for "Immediate Dismissal" by the central government, all local government officials covered up the SARS epidemic and no government officials dared to report on the actual SARS situation. Even worse was the fact that most local officials never had any trustworthy statistics. Every level of the government gave orders to the level below to follow suit; every official tried to eliminate SARS and figure out a way to cover it up. The most common approach was to change the victim's death certificates. Ordinarily, all SARS induced deaths with other symptoms were not recorded or classified as SARS. According to a Hong Kong based businessman who did business with Hong Kong and China, there were cases of euthanasia in SARS related cases in Zhongshan, Guangdong Province. According to a knowledgeable source, in order to prevent the spread of SARS, hospitals administered euthanasia to patients diagnosed with SARS. Many provinces in China had their own ways of dealing with SARS, but they did not communicate with each other, resulting in a broad cover-up all over.

Caption: During the SARS Forum held at a public library in Flushing, NY, an elderly audience member asked Dr. Xu Jianchao of Yale University if cerebral hemorrhages were considered infectious. This person said that his relative in Guangdong Province died during the period when Guangdong Province was covering up SARS. The death certificate stated that the cause of death was a cerebral hemorrhage, yet the hospital did not allow his family members to view the body, stating that the body was "highly infectious."

An infectious disease defence system official in Hubei Province said, "Historically speaking, infectious diseases have always been a highly guarded secret in China. The Chinese government's way of handling large-scale epidemics has always been to 'isolate and destroy.' In other words, to use the army to seal off the infected area, and then let the patients die by themselves. Patients who tried to escape would be apprehended as criminals." The Chinese government recently announced that the most severe punishment for those SARS patients who did not obey treatment, and who intended to infect others could be death. This was in fact just a traditional approach for handling infectious patients.

The World Health Organisation announced on June 24, 2003 that they had removed Beijing from the travel advisory lists. The day before, Hong Kong was also removed from the SARS infested areas. It was learned that the World Health Organisation's decision was intended to revitalise the tourist industry in China and Hong Kong.

A policeman from Guangdong Province said, "No one really knows what the actual SARS situation in China is like. Each and every level of the government has been involved in the cover up, and even the Central Government doesn't know."