HONG KONG -- Chinese officialdom continues to both avoid reality and to invent it. The Chinese people still suffer because of the absence of freedom of information. Ironically, Hong Kong residents are still receiving phone calls from friends and relatives in Guangdong, asking them what is going on in China.
China's age-old Middle Kingdom complex has been having a field day. In the face of the grave and global medical threat posed by the severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, China has not merely declined to open up to itself, which is bad enough, but it has also declined to open up to the outside world. Critically, although the crisis began in Guangdong in the second week of November, it wasn't until April 2 that Beijing permitted World Health Organization investigators to go to the source of the potential pandemic, Guangdong Province.
Information about SARS that the world had an urgent need to know was long withheld. China is only opening up a little now because of outside pressure applied. But one reason for this belated change is that the pressure has been too timidly applied by the outside world.