Beijing Newspeak

Inexplicable delays in the reporting of news are part of the course in China and are often justified as necessary ways to avoid public panic. The initial response to the SARS epidemic is a famous example of why this reasoning is just unacceptable. Yet it continues to happen and the central government is seen backing local authorities who have sat on an important piece of news for two weeks.

Over the weekend, on May 12 to be exact, I received a story about a two-year-old who had died from an outbreak of hand-foot-mouth disease in a city in Shandong. The girl actually died on April 29. The details were typically vague:

The spokesman also said that there had been “some cases” of the disease since the beginning of the year, without providing specific figures.

I added in a couple of lines which read something like, ”The spokesman did not explain why the girl’s death was not reported for two weeks”. It was removed by the senior editor. I also pointed out that the girl’s death occurred just before the May national holiday - government officials aren’t big fans of bad news at holiday time especially if it means they have to cancel plans. This point also casts doubt over the reliability of the claim:

After the girl had died, the city’s health bureau carried out epidemiology research across the city, quarantining those infected by the disease and informing kindergartens and schools.

Schools are closed during the holiday. Unsurprisingly, the senior editor took it upon himself to tap the delete button once again.

I thought that would be the last I would hear of the incident. But it seems various Chinese media sources have been conducting some fruitful investigative work leading to the Shandong Health Bureau being forced to deny a cover-up of multiple infant deaths.

Newspaper and Internet reports from Shandong province have said that “many” children have died and hundreds of others have fallen ill from a mysterious disease that has swept through Linyi city since late April.

“The reports on the Internet are pure rumour, this illness is a viral infection of the intestines that commonly occurs in infants and children in the summer and autumn months,” the Shandong Health Bureau said on its website in a statement posted on Sunday.

The bureau was responding to an Internet report that said at least 26 children had died in Linyi between April 29 and May 11.

Of course, the local government’s decision to delay the reporting of the incident for fearing of panicking citizens had the opposite effect:

The Shanghai Morning Post blamed health officials for failing to inform the public of the disease leading to panic in the city.

Parents were refusing to allow their children out of doors and were avoiding eating beef or lamb believing the illness was linked to foot and mouth disease that affects livestock, the newspaper said.

The Linyi health bureau only began informing media of the “hand-foot-mouth disease” on Friday, after panic had spread to many households, it said.

It wasn’t so long ago that I was editing an article about the Chinese government’s “revolutionary” regulation regarding release of information by local governments and the dire need for transparency. This regulation has yet to take effect but the contempt with which local officials will treat it is already obvious.

According to the Yanzhao Metropolitan Daily, the latest outbreak resulted in the death of a three-year-old child on April 29, sparking rumours that many children had died.

“All levels of government must recognise that by creating a transparent government they can win the confidence of the people and dispel and reduce unstable social elements” the daily said in an editorial.

The paper also accused the Linyi government of failing to implement new regulations mandating that governments be more open with information.

According to the Shanghai Morning Post, local journalists in Linyi did not report on the outbreak, indicating that there was a possible gag order on the epidemic by local officials.

As this article points out, the same local health authorities were at the centre of the high-profile jailing of blind activist Chen Guangcheng last year, a gross injustice which featured a satisfying “polisher’s aside” in Xinhua’s reporting of the court sentence: ”The court document said that Chen, who is blind, stood in the middle of a road organzing a mob to disrupt traffic and damage property.” It would appear that the Linyi health officials accused of forced abortions and sterilisations were never reprimanded behind closed doors by the central government.

The outbreak comes after years of dissatisfaction with Linyi health authorities who have been accused of forcing abortions and sterilisations on thousands of women while implementing the “one-child” family planning policy.

In December last year, veteran blind activist Chen Guangcheng was sentenced to four years and three months in jail by a Linyi court after trying to bring such violations to light.

For nearly two years, Chen endured beatings and detention by people believed to have been hired by local officials as he sought to sue local health authorities and publicise the abuse.

Local courts refused to take up the case and instead convicted Chen of disrupting public order and jailed him.

Xinhua followed this barrage of negative reports with an offering which pathetically only included two new paragraphs:

An outbreak of hand-foot-mouth disease that killed a toddler in east China’s Shandong Province can be contained if effective measures are maintained, according to a Chinese epidemiologist.

Epidemiological investigations have identified an above average number of cases of the disease in Linyi city this spring, but they have occurred sporadically, said Wang Xianjun, chief of infectious diseases control with Shandong Provincial Center for Diseases Control.

I don’t pretend to have Mr Wang’s expertise but I thought the best way to deal with an epidemic was to introduce measures at the first sign of one breaking out. These paragraphs from a China Radio International report show the Ministry of Health’s eagerness to absolve itself from responsibility and the confidence it places in the Linyi health bureau:

The Ministry of Health said it has not received an reports of an epidemic from its subordinate in Shandong province.

Ministry Spokesman Mao Qun’an said the news released by authorized institutions is the most credible.

The Ministry of Health has declared the rumors that several children died from an unknown disease on May 11 untrue. It has asked the Shandong Province Public Health Department to refute the rumors.

Job done. The dissension is probably over. But when official tardiness affects another country and public criticism ensues, the Chinese authorities find they can’t just sweep the issue under the carpet. So when South Korea start kicking up a stink about China’s handling of the recent incident, in which a Chinese freighter collided with a Korean cargo ship, then there is a major problem.

The first thing I asked about this story was the obvious one: ”Why didn’t the Chinese ship stop to help a ship it could see was in distress?” The Xinhua journalist in charge of the story promised to ask the local bureau reporter the question but that was the last I heard of it. Until it was all over the news. This report from the Korea Times has the background.

China’s delayed reporting of a sunken South Korean freighter off the Chinese coast has angered Koreans, while the search for 16 missing crew members continued for a third consecutive day Monday.

The South Korean government, meanwhile, remained cautious over the accident to avoid stirring a diplomatic dispute with China.

The accident has sparked suspicions that the Chinese authorities, as well as the Chinese ship, belatedly informed their South Korean counterparts of the collision, to cover up the cause of the accident.

China gave official notification of the accident to the South Korean Embassy in Beijing at 12:50 a.m. Sunday, nearly 21 hours after the accident took place and some 14 hours after it first learned of the incident, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

The belated report also sparked speculation that the Chinese ship left the scene of the accident without trying to rescue the victims.

Now, China has relatives of the missing crew members on their doorstep and they are not as easy to ignore as their own citizens. As Reuters reports:

‘The families are distressed and mad at the Chinese officials for their late response to this incident,’ an official with Bookwang Shipping Co, based in Pusan, said, adding 21 relatives made the trip.

I can’t imagine I’ll be quoting the Shipping Times too many times in my life, but this is a good round-up of the Korean media reaction. Some Korean newspapers believe it is not the only the Chinese side that is at fault.

Questions too are being asked about the co-operation, or lack of it, between Chinese and South Korean authorities, with delays in reporting and, in the case of South Korea, a fax being sent that was not picked up for three hours.

“The Korean government was not prompt.” said the editorial in the JoongAng Daily, “The Korea Coast Guard sent a one page report via fax after six hours. Then, the fax was not noticed for another three hours.”

But the newspaper Donga Ilbo reports that the Korean Embasy is pointing the finger at Chinese authorities. Quoting an un-named Embassy officical: ” The Korean government was first informed of the accident by a Korean vessel company through the Korean maritime police, not by the Chinese government. And it was the Korean government who asked the Chinese government to confirm the accident. That is against international practice.”

It should not be overlooked that one sailor was from Indonesia and eight were from Myanmar, although incredibly there is no mention (none that I found myself anyway) of the story on the Myanmar state media homepage.

Two more incidents - one domestic (which means we shouldn’t be interfering of course) and one international - that make the new “freedom of information” regulation very hard to buy.

UPDATE: A diplomatic desk reporter, when pressed about an inadequate translation of a Foreign Ministry statement pledging to use “all its strength” to search for the missing sailors, said, “Well that’s all the information we received. And anyway the ship was registered in Saint Vincent, which means it was an accident between two foreign ships which happened to occur in China’s waters and China is doing all it can to save the sailors.”

There also seems to be some confusion over the nationalities of the missing crew members. Xinhua says eight from Korea, seven from Myanmar and one from Indonesia. The rest of the world says seven from Korea, eight from Myanmar and one from Indonesia. And no, the Foreign Ministry did not want to check their figures. Going on track records …